Progressive RockMetal
Self-released · 27 May 2026
Twenty-three minutes, four tracks and no voice. Laws & Triangles opens with “Maw” (5:11) and ends with “Atemporal” (7:30), and everything in between is written outward from the drum kit: polyrhythms, staccato attacks, thick riffing and a layer of programmed strings that never steps aside. “Threshold” (6:50) is the odd one out, with a church organ and a synthesised choir pulling it towards cinematic ground.
Tom Rice is a drummer and drum teacher based in Manchester, and he used to tutor maths part-time. Anyone who has him placed has him placed through Konom, the progressive metal band of the 2021 self-titled album, or through the spell he spent covering for Dave Lombardo in Empire State Bastard, the Simon Neil and Mike Vennart project. This EP is the first thing he has signed on his own: he plays drums, percussion, synths, organ and the string programming, and Neil Purdy (a composer whose pieces have turned up in HBO, Disney+ and Netflix trailers) handles guitars, bass and banjo. The title comes from the Writer’s monologue in Stalker, the film Andrei Tarkovsky released in 1979.
Building a record from the kit has the consequence that everything arrives from the same side. “Maw”, “Forerunner” (4:06) and “Atemporal” share the same sound bank, the same kind of attack and the same way of entering, and heard back to back they come across as one piece cut into three. The strings, present on every track and often carrying the melody, sound like a sample library, which becomes obvious whenever they have to hold a long line. Twenty-three minutes hide that wear well; a full album wouldn’t.
Four tracks, twenty-three minutes and thirty-eight seconds, self-released on 27 May. Rice says part of the motivation behind the EP was to set himself a technical challenge with the polyrhythms. Konom, whose only album came out in 2021, still haven’t followed it with another.
Rating: 6.5/10
Text by Guillem Cardós