The band was founded in the mid nineties by Taneli Kiljunen, Snake Laitinen, Joiku Harmaja and Rasmus Nora. They started their career with two demos entitled Equilibrium and Fata Morgana which quickly lead to Spikefarm snatching them away from the open market.
The band's debut album Menace and Prayer was released in 1999 and TOC's music was best described as keyboard driven old school Black Metal, dubbing TOC Children of Bodom's kid brother for obvious reasons.
For their second showdown entitled Pervertigo, TOC headed into Gothenburg's legendary Studio Fredman. The recording session proved to be long and hard with the vocalist losing his voice among other trouble, but the resulting mixture of metal genres was a huge leap for the band. By combining different styles of metal music TOC categorized itself into a genre of impossible to define.
For their new album, Loss Angeles, TOC headed again to Studio Fredman, but this time the recordings had a more psychedelic aspect. The one-legged albino pigeons and such seen on the streets of Gothenburg certainly brought their tang onto the lyrics and gave the music many never-before-tried twists.
Although continuing on the same line of mixing all styles of metal, TOC chose to make this cake out of non-Pervertigo ingredients. Taking several pints of progressive metal and elements of rock and mixing those with a couple of ounces of power-ish vocals and even small splashes of nightclub jazz, TOC created the melancholic but groovy story of love and crime that's called Loss Angeles.
Quite strange huh? Well believe me, it is. TOC's music isn't really easy to hear... you have to be well open minded and prepared to accept the fact that heavy metal has to move on if we want to hear something new and not the same old guitar riffs and sounds that we've heard before in the past.
I don't know if the heavy metal community is ready to hear something like this but I am sure some of you out there will enjoy listening to this album. It's different, it's weird, it has a lot for strange tunes and it's very respectable too.
Production is crystal clear and the whole booklet is a nice package. I have to mention the band's two cover songs on Smoke On The Water by the rock leviathans Deep Purple and Night Crawler by the legendary heavy metal act, Judas Priest.
I am sure none of you've heard Smoke On The Water like this ever before, you didn't even think you'd hear it the way this guys have recorded it. Fast and brutal, definitely a song that most death metal bands will adore and at the same time curse their fate for not doing that first. Now, Night Crawler is more into the way that Judas Priest released this track. Same tempo beat, same vocal lines and same emphasis, nothing more to say here.
Overall, Loss Angeles brings the band yet to another milestone in their career, and one can only wonder what this band has in store for us next...