What You Should Be Listening To - Tesseract

    Today I’m back with another installment of What You Should Be Listening To, with a band that is one of my favourites right now. They’re funky, they’re heavy, they’re really just all around awesome. They’re Tesseract, and you should be listening to them.
 
     Another great metal band from the UK, Tesseract are generally counted among the leading purveyors of the subgenre djent*, but really their sound is more unique than can be encapsulated with a single descriptor, onomatopoeic or not. My best attempt to convey what they’re all about? Detuned guitars and snaky, angular riffs often pointed to as hallmarks of the so-called djent sound combine with elements of prog, jazz, funk, and ambient/electronic type stuff to form something complex and multi-layered but not excessively showy or technical, something both heavy and ethereal, something varied and diverse, but capable of holding one’s interest and chock full of head-bangingly good grooves. So yeah, simply calling them “djent” doesn’t really adequately illustrate the many colours and shapes of their sound any more than simply calling them “metal” does.
 
     Even though Tesseract is one of those bands where every member, every instrument, is pulling their own weight, I have to single out Dan Tompkins’ vocal work as one of the stars of Tesseract’s debut album One. For me, this album has it all: two guitars that complement each other without just being harmonized and that oscillate between heavy, percussive riffs and open, ambient soundscapes; bass that can not only actually be heard (almost a rarity in metal, it seems) but that also contributes to driving the grooves of the songs; and the drums... well, I can’t say enough about Jay Postones’ funky, jazzy, and yet-still-heavy drumwork. But if the musical end of Tesseract moves you, as in ‘gets your head banging and/or your foot tapping’, then the vocal end moves you, as in “connects with and/or touches you on an emotional level”. Maybe that sounds a little trite or cliched, but I can’t think of a better way to describe how Dan’s voice takes One that extra step. I’m not necessarily a huge fan of making sensational or potentially controversial comparisons**, but I’d compare the power of Dan’s voice to that of Maynard James Keenan of Tool. It’s that good.
 
     Of course, there’s a small snag, namely that Dan isn’t in Tesseract anymore. And neither is Elliot Coleman, the American singer (formerly of Sky Eats Airplane, among other things) who stepped in to replace Tompkins on Perspective, a semi-acoustic EP Tesseract put out earlier this year. Coleman’s voice is equally unique and almost as powerful, albeit in a different way. Now, however, Tesseract is left without a vocalist, and while I’m so very stoked to hear whatever their next album might be, I am at the same time more than a little sceptical that Tesseract can find a vocalist who can both fill a couple of massive pairs of shoes as well as keep up with a band whose music demands vocal work of such a high calibre. Hopefully the guys can pull off something I like as much as I like One.
 
     In the meantime, you can get up to speed and get to know Tesseract a little better. The perfect place to start is the song “Eden”, which exists in two versions: the original, a lengthy epic with Dan singing that closes out One, and “Eden 2.0", a shorter edit sung by Elliot for the Perspective EP to showcase the new guy tackling the old material in the old way (the rest of the EP consists of acoustic reimaginings of songs from One along with a cover of Jeff Buckley’s Dream Brother). In other words you get to hear basically the same song done the same way by the two different singers. It’s obviously not an unheard of situation in metal, but the results are cool nonetheless.
 
     If you want to continue on in this vein, you can of course simply listen to both versions of any of the other songs from Perspective that also appear on One (“Perfection”, “April”, and “Origin”) to hear the band acoustically twist and tweak a few of their old songs to reflect both their musical progress and the experience of a new vocalist’s fresh take on things. But to get the full Tesseract effect I really recommend getting a copy of One and just putting it on, start to finish, uninterrupted. It’s a musical experience, and it’s why Tesseract is a band to watch.








* Never heard of djent? Never fear, that post I promised a while ago about genres and the like is still in the works, if perhaps a ways off.
** Although it seems I’m nevertheless quite willing to make them, as when I compared Sylosis to Metallica. I will however stand by that one just like I’ll stand by this one.