Spun: Tetrix

By Garth Paulson

Usually improvement is exciting. Watching a band take steps in the right direction, however small, is often immensely rewarding and leaves you eagerly anticipating what they’ll do next.

Regrettably, this is not the case for Tetrix. Even though their latest album, 6, is an enormous improvement over last year’s heinous atrocious 5 it’s still pretty awful in its own right.

To Tetrix’s credit the production values on 6 are immaculate, at least in comparison to its predecessor. Where 5 sounded like the worst kind of home recording, 6 almost sounds like a bearable demo-tape.

For the most part you can hear what’s happening on the album though the band still maintains their bizarre fixation with droning fuzz and ludicrously distorted vocals.

In the end, it’s still pretty much the same old Tetrix as before. A band trying so damn hard to let people know just how experimental they are and, in the process, end up sacrificing anything remotely resembling melody.

Though you have to applaud Tetrix for attempting to push the boundaries of music as far as they do, 6 is simply bad music. Yes, it isn’t nearly as painful as their previous work, but you could hardly call it listenable.