Tesseract – Perspective EP (Century Media Records)
Monday, 25th March 2013
There probably won’t be a better time than now for the respective djent bands to start disowning the style they are so responsible for flooding the scene with. It’s one of metal’s time-honored traditions (ref. 80’s thrash, Gothenburg bands, etc.), for when a style gets too popular and saturated, the conspirators find ways to abandon ship. It’s not so much as cowardice as it is foresight and Tesseract has mounds of it on their Perspective EP, which is a step forward from their 2010 One debut.
Comprised of five songs (including a cover of Jeff Buckley’s “Dream Brother”),Perspective displays the Brits’ ability to create space with their music. The reserved “Perfection” allows singer Elliot Coleman to thread his soft, almost dainty vocals over airy guitar lines and jazzy bass lines, while “April” sees the singer stretch out even further amidst hard-strummed acoustic guitars and a pulsating rhythm.
The kinetic “April” employs some rather funk-styled basslines and crisp melodies, and “Dream Brother” while probably not improving on the original (much like Katatonia failed to do with “Nightmares By the Sea” from 1999’sTonight’s Decision) adds supplemental flow to the EP’s proceedings. “Eden 2.0” closes things out, with Tesseract supplying their usual array off-kilter rhythms, sky-high vocals, and piercing melodies.
A potential prime indicator of where Tesseract is going with their next full-length, Perspective is a successful step outside of the djent circle for a band that appears to have a much broader lens than their contemporaries. Of course, now that we say something like this, they’ll run back to staccato riffs and blasé song constructs, but for now, this is hopefully a harbinger of better things to come.
(This content originally appeared on Blistering.com)
