a-tota-so – I Told You So (self-released)

12th September 2026

Midlands-based purveryors of the finest heavy math rock, a-tota-so, release third album I Told You So. And as expected it is an absolute banger of a record. Pete Darrington reviews.

Artist: a-tota-so
Release: I Told You So
Label: Self released
Release date: 4 September 2026
Find it: Bandcamp

I Told You So is the third album from math rockers a-tota-so (I see what they did there) and it’s a coming-of-age record for both the band and the genre.

Typically, math rock bands go through 3 stages of development. I should know this, as in a former life I played bass for the posthumously branded ‘math rock pioneers’ Cable way back in the 1990s.

Stage 1: you form a band and have no idea how music works and as a result of this, with no understanding of the rules on such things as tempo, time signatures or melody, you create largely an incoherent mess. But true to the infinite monkeys theory, out of hundreds of hours persistent belligerence a handful of glowing nuggets of genius emerges from the chaos, that while sounding like no-one else, are sonically the embers of something that if nurtured correctly could spread like wildfire. You focus on those bits that you thought were cool, the bits that made people go ‘Ooh, that was different!’ and that’s when you enter Stage 2.

Stage 2: is where you’ve now learned to play your instruments, you’ve studied the rules of music and now consciously seek to subvert those rules in a calculated and clever way. Rules are meant to be broken. This, is sadly where most math rock bands stall and die. Music that is intricate, clever, cerebral, challenging but sadly bereft of any meaning and, more importantly, a tune. The ones who introspectively ask themselves ‘why does hardly anyone like our music and what can we do to change that?’ are the ones who make it to stage 3.

Stage 3: is where you’ve realise that what got you into music in the first place is a tune. Songs. Lyrics that tell a story, that evoke emotions. Words give black and white music colour. The realisation comes that if you are to get other people into your music, you need to connect with them emotionally and nothing does that quite like a song.

a-tota-so dipped their toes into stage 3 on their second album, Lights Out released in 2022, by utilising a plethora of guest vocalists to put emotional meat on their rhythmic bones, which could have been a bit of an issue for a band which thrives on live performance. However, they’ve managed to carry the approach through to their gigs, currently being up to around 100 guest vocalists joining them across performances.

Now founding member Marty Toner has bitten the bullet and added using a pen and microphone to his repertoire (I wish he’d decided to do it sooner). And so it has come to pass, that with their third album, a-tota-so has fully entered stage 3 in the most gloriously satisfying fashion.

I Told You So comes out of the trenches, all guns blazing. The blend is perfect. It’s clever, it twists and turns, changes tempo, dishes up arpeggios that would tie your fingers in knots but also it has consistently good songs from a unified source.

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot going on in the world to write about right now, so perhaps that’s what compelled Toner to step up to the mic, as this collection of what I would describe as math rock ‘anthems’ addresses everything from anxiety, depression, grief and the suffocating weight of the modern world. But it’s not just doom and gloom. \

There’s a sense of hope, that we will find our way through the strife that humankind is facing right now, and we will all be better off for it – after all, struggle is the path to enlightenment, it’s always darkest before dawn and somewhat brilliantly, I Told You So leaves you feeling like while we’re stumbling around in the dark right now, if we persevere we will find the light switch.