Tesseract - Concealing Fate EP
Century Media
Tech Metal
6 songs (27:29)
Release year: 2010
Century Media
Reviewed by Jaime
Album of the year
Since the dawn of the "Djent" movement there have been two names. Two titles that have been the foundations for this internet based musical phenom have been Misha Mansoor's Blub psuedonym which transformed into the rather successful Periphery who have managed to get a rather sizeable amount of tours and press coverage under their belt. In Britain lies the other cornerstone, one that's been a far slower burn, doing scarce little until this year. After a few lineup changes, live dates here and there and shopping for years for a label to put out their album Tesseract finally bring out the EP Concealing Fate, a song broken down into six seperate tracks, that some of which have been available to listen to in some form or another over the past four years. Part I: Acceptance kicks of fairly slowly, gradually moving though it's 8 and a half minutes with the clean guitar part constantly mingling into each different musical section that comes along effortlessly, from verse to chorus and all the little interlude sections before allowing the distroted guitars to carry rhythm about five or so minutes in until the clean guitars resurface closer to the end. It is, despite of all that's going on, a very laid track excluding the short screaming sections. The vocals here are wonderful, Dan Tompkins' clean delivery is hugely emotive and is unquestionably stronger than his screams which aren't bad but pale in comparison to that clearcut voice. The use of synths is understated throughout the whole EP, but they serve as an invaluable glue to hold together those parts that could otherwise be seen as quite dry. Part II: Deception serves as the band's lead single and compared to the rest you can see why. It's epic in scope, has everything that the band wants to show off and isn't hugely long. The vocals are clearly the star here, with the song building around them whenever they appear in the song. It's a very nice touch to go from just a sort of "plain" Meshuggah riff to having the vocals come in and everything else fall from beneath them. The ending does this fantastically as well as the song slows down.

Part III: The Impossible is like a little interlude in the grander scheme of the EP as a whole. The vocals go into a sort of chanting while everything else lets rip until the whole band go very rhythmic, the vocals syncing in time with the guitars and bass until the sort of chanting part reappears again for the guitars and bass to go even further than the previous section rhythmically with a slap bass section from Amos Williams leading the charge. You can hear some constant musical themes popping up from the previous parts (especially in the screaming sections) that maintain the feeling that the parts do belong together as one song and aren't just named like that for some psuedo-artistic reason. Part IV: Perfection starts of almost like a pop song lyrically but musically it has far more girth than that in it's whole two minutes and probably has the closest thing to a conventional solo on the whole record. It's odd really, but it takes until here to notice that guitarists Acle Kahney and James Monteith don't really step into the limelight as such, hell the bassist shows off more than they do which would probably cause a few people's blood to boil. But the fact of the matter is that they never need to. The songs are so diverse and deep that some unneeded soloing wouldn've thrown the atmosphere of the whole ofConcealing Fate off. Part V: Epiphany is at least one song I know from hearing the band from years ago although now with the fantastic production the EP has and some wonderous lowend slap bass in the "verse". Finally there's the final track: Part VI: Origin which brings back a few things from the songs preceding it, even borrowing a few lyrics too which adds to the continuity of the whole thing. A clever notion that does work when you notice it. If there's one thing I've not touched on even slightly it's the drums. Oh the drums. How wonderful it is to have a band in this genre actually feature their drummer on their recordings! It's one of the many things that allow Tesseract stand head and shoulders above their peers and adds to that colossal sonic palette they present. That and the fact that they sound so different from the rest as well. It's a genre filled with indistinguishable bands but at the very least Tesseract are the one people will recognize immediately. Next year sees the release of their debut album "One" and going on what they's shown here it's looking to be something very sepcial indeed.
Killing Songs :
Concealing Fate
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Other albums by Tesseract that we have reviewed:
Tesseract - One reviewed by Jaime and quoted 90 / 100
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