I expected these guys to be good, but they surpassed those expectations on Saturday night.
Sold out show, or near enough, and an interesting mix of age groups. I guess a few older guys like myself caught wind of this band on the back of their Kscope album.
It was a win-win for me, because fellow Kscopers Nordic Giants were the opening act, but given how diverse and different their music was to the headliners, I wondered if the 6.30 start would see them play to an empty hall. but no, the place was almost full and they went down a storm. Well worth a shout if they play your neighbourhood - very widescreen cinematic style of music, but equally dramatic, and clever interplay between the films on screen and the live performance underneath. Probably more music-as-art than prog-as-rock but I thought they made a great opening act.
Middle band The Contortionist were average, more akin to the headliners, but terrible sound and too much shouty screamy vocals, and zero interaction with the audience.
Tesseract on the other hand showed why they've come so far so relatively quickly. Well balanced and though out set list, crystal sound clear enough to hear everything but loud enough to get the adrenaline pumping. I'd be the first to admit that the djent style can become very monotonous very quickly, but these guys have learned how to bring light and shade into the songs, with lots of melody and keeping each song fairly short and tight.
And....they've got a bona fide singer! His range was really impressive, especially above the guitars - every time he hit the highest notes he sustained them really well, and kept getting huge cheers for his efforts. And although he kept the banter to a minimum, he came across as a really nice chap appreciative of the fanbase getting them to this stage.
The lighting was minimal but really effective - again, I think they sat down and gave this a lot of thought beforehand, as the colours, tones, strobes etc totally synched in with the rhythm and the silences inbetween.
In a scene cluttered by DT clones and DT themselves going off the boil, I was getting a bit jaded with prog metal, but damned if Tesseract haven't got me all excited about the future of music again!
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