British Progressive Metal band TesseracT's new video a big hit... check them out!

Tue, 27 Apr 2010

TesseracT are a five piece Progressive Metal band from the UK, who have received much praise “They're awesome, that’s all you need to know" – Total Rock, “one of the most promising rising bands in the UK” – Rock Sound.
TesseracT are Dan Tompkins - Vocals, Acle Kahney - Guitars, James Monteith - Guitars, Jay Postones - Drums, Amos Williams - Bass & Vocals.

This week they embark on their European tour and their first Music Video for Deception, Concealing Fate Part 2, which had over 5,000 views on YouTube in just 2 days. So we thought we’d take a trip down memory lane to when we chatted with the band at last November’s Hellfire Festival.

In August 2009 singer Dan Tompkins joined the band, and they’re happy with their melodic direction. “Screaming is out the door basically.  The last couple of years we just have become a bit bored of it. We’re so lucky we’ve found our new lead singer.” Bass player Amos tells us.

“I have no style that is my style. Melody is my forte.  I do enjoy a good scream, it goes well in the right place, and it adds aggression to what you’re trying to get across.  But doing it all the time is slightly unnecessary in my point of view.” Dan explains, “Melody is what I do, it’s what I’ve brought to the band the songs are now alot more accessible to people. People can understand what the lyrics are about, they can take what they want from what I’m saying to people.  It’s understandable. That’s basically what people want at the end of the day. People also want to hear screams and that’s great if that’s purely what you want to listen to but we’re trying to appeal to a wider audience and melody is the way forward.”

   

TesseracT have recently finished their debut album, ‘One’, having spent over a year working on it.  “We’re a fully DIY band at the moment, we’re very lucky we’ve got access to some very high end studios.  Between myself and Acle, the guitarist, we’ve been recording for the last 14 months on and off.” Amos said “Going in and doing drum tracks, taking those back, editing those and then going on from there.  We’ve now got to the point where there’s maybe two vocal tracks left to finish and that’s it.  Then it’s just mixing and mastering.”
With the state of the music industry, in terms of record sales, being not that great, TesseracT are enjoying that the thriving live music scene. “It is good. We’ve just been discussing that it’s so good that venues are now taking the… *pauses* there’s not polite way of saying that… but they’ve started introducing a 25% cut of your merchandise, which is pretty much taking out most band’s profits. It’s like, ‘What do we do?’ start playing for free and not ever be able to do this properly?”  Amos says thoughtfully, “So a few bands have started to get a petition together to send to PRS and PPL to try and get this sorted out as it’s just a joke.”

Last year the band toured through parts of Europe, despite having a few nightmare moments with accommodation, “they were a bit of a nightmare to be honest… I think we stayed in Fritzl’s basement.” Amos joked. In 2010 they’re looking forward to returning to Europe for a headlining tour (this week) along with the Asymmetry Festival in Poland (which is held in May) and the Hasle-Rüegsau in Switzerland with Cynic.  “We’ve also been talking to someone about doing a festival in India that Skindred did this year – so it looks all above board. It’d be like WOW, imagine doing India that’s great. It’d be stunning.” Amos told us.
“It’d be amazing!” Drummer Jay added.  

 

(Check out the full tour dates on their website http://www.tesseractband.co.uk)

When the band says they’re a DIY band they’re not kidding, they already have under their belt the experience and accomplishment of organising a European tour on their own. 

“We’ve just recently started talking with agents but before then it’s been all our own work which has been pretty amazing really, going all over Europe all of your own back and making a bit of money in the process.” Amos explained. 

Guitarist James added “It’s the power of social networking really, through Myspace we booked a European tour!  Which is quite mad!”

“The first few got in touch with us and then we tried to fill in the dates in between ourselves.” Jay explained.

Amos then added “It’s totally possible to do it completely DIY, there’s no need for anybody except yourself.  If you’ve got the enthusiasm, energy and the ability to stay up til 4 in the morning and then go to work at 6 in the morning. Go for it. If you can go 8 stages out of 10 on your own then you’re going to get alot further in the end, because a label is going  to look and you and go ‘great, what do we need to do? we can put these guys out there and put so much more into taking them much further, and we don’t need to build these guys up – they’ve build themselves up”

TesseracT are definitely a band worth paying attention to for their music, their passion and their drive to succeed and stay involved, an inspiration to any young musician’s with dreams of a future in the industry. They know the importance of working hard rather than relying on others and we think they’ve got a great future ahead of them!

Check out our Facebook Gallery for photos of the band live.