ONE

DJENT, or is it djent? whatever. Apparently this describes Meshuggah followers, but I may be wrong as I haven't given Meshuggah a go and don't know anything about this djent stuff. The style seems to incorporate syncopated mechanical riffing, devoid of melody, and the combination of teeny sounding yells/growls and nasal melodic singing.

There is of course some melody to be found in the instrumentation and Tesseract seem to combine one guitar doing the mechancial stuff with the other clean and dreamy, with delay, chorus and all other spacey stuff providing a melodic overtone, similar to keyboards in a metal band, and this pans out into soft ambient sections which work well.

There's a strong influence of Tool and the aforementioned Meshuggah in this music (as is to be expected), but all in all it turns out quite well and definitely shows promise. The melodies and ambient type sections really make this more than just an exercise in mechanics, though they need to throw in a few riffs that b-r-e-a-t-h and groove otherwise it just passes you by.

P.S. Turns out this singer has now left the band and they have recruited another which has upset many fans. The new singer is better for mine and seems to offer a bit more in terms of range and exploration beyond the nasally yelling, think Muse, Buckley, Plant, so it may be that their next album will be a whole lot more appealing to Progarchives devotees - let's wait and see.

Okay, so this is my first review ever on this site, or on any site for that matter. But, to start off my first review, I thought I'd start off with one of my favorite progressive metal, or "djent", bands. Now I have to say this album didn't grow on me at first. But, some songs did stand out. The big majority of the songs that stand out are the Concealing Fate parts. Eden is also their longest, and that was also another track the stood out to me through my first listen. The rest of the songs I have to say weren't done as well as they didn't have much to stand out with. Well, to me that is.

Okay, why give this album 4 stars? For the songs, a majority of them are good. For musicianship, the drumming is superb and you can tell it is complex on most tracks. The vocals I also really enjoy. The melodic singing style of his voice just sounds wonderful to me. Now, the guitar and bass. Seems pretty standard to me. Nothing really stood out as great or outstanding. Probably the greatest moment with the guitars is during the breakdown in Deception, which is part 2 of the Concealing Fate. I also fancy album artwork, but I must say this one doesn't really stand out nor does it lack creativity. Could of used a little more design.

***** songs- Concealing Fate (All Parts), Eden. **** songs- April, Sunrise, Lament *** songs- Nascent