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More than two decades in the game and if by now you haven’t heard the name; you’ve been sleeping an such; probably bumping the lame. Of course, I’m referring to the greatest of all time, the one no-one expected, the Bronx bomber himself; T.O.N.E-Z of Mission:Infect and E-Z Money Records. Over the past couple of years he’s been making the transition between the underground horror-core scene and the underground hip-hop scene. Through such transition this guy has been able to accomplish more than most artists that have been involved with the horror-core scene for the past ten years. He’s done tracks with Potluck, Twiztid, and Tech N9ne to name a few. However, this makes no difference; he doesn’t need to collab on the track with a ‘hotter’ artist to attract attention to his name.

The album presented to us on March 27, 2009, Happy Land, is a tale of irony, time spent on a carnival’s merry-go ’round of mishaps and hardships. It’s a good concept to an album similar to other albums released over the past year, year and a half, involving being at a theme park on a ride of some sort that would end up being the name of the album. Instead, T(dot), flipped it and made the entire park the album. Not just one ride of up’s and down’s but an entire day spent within the gates under the winter sun, each ride or game being a different track on the album. Like I said Happy Land is an album of irony. On the surface when you first look at it, seeing the theme park it looks like a time full of fun and hours could be lost at the games and rounds of ring toss. But, what lies on the surface of this park is a façade of trials and tribulations, things that would push the normal to an extreme and have them buckle under the pressure.

At the start of the disc we’re greeted by T.O.N.E-Z as he stops to shake our hand, but we didn’t let go quick enough and before we realize it we’re stuck in the middle of the park, without any tickets to ride the rides. Odd enough there isn’t any other patrons walking around, it’s just us and at each stand/ride there’s T.O.N.E like an auctioneer trying to convince us to take a spin or try our luck at the games of chance.

There’s so much pain bled through the speakers to the disc, from the disc to the speakers, from the speakers to the eardrums. Like on the tracks ‘Winter Sun’ or ‘Truth Serum’ T.O.N.E-Z shows how coping with the losses of one’s closest to you like a brother or a best friend through music makes for a good song.

Websites

TonezWorld.com
MySpace.com/TonezWorld

Release Date:

• 04/17/2009

Reviewer:

• Whipstick