Tesseract - Sonder

What's happening people?! I know, I'm a little late to the party once again but its time to take on one of the most interesting albums to grace my stereo of late, we're looking today at the djentlemen of Tesseract and their recent offering, Sonder.

Unlike much of the metal scene of late, the album leans heavily toward the softer/lighter side of vocal deliveries. Choosing to rely heavily on a more clean vocal style, it is distinctly different to what we're used to. But I think it's this that allows the rest of the music to speak to highly of itself. It opens up to a world of lovingly raw and aggressive guitars and drums, bouncing riffs that will send you to space and then let gravity crash you back to earth.

In a way the atmosphere and ambience created in this album, is reminiscent of a Sci-Fi film soundtrack, with its ability to build up suspense and draw in the listener to its cinematic brilliance. I'm thinking particularly of Smile in this instance. On top of this, the album has moments of true tranquillity and when measured against the technicality in the guitarwork, the whole thing swarms together to create a remarkable ambience. Similarly mirrored in the vocal balance between the harsher 'scream' vocals and the cleaner sung sections, the balance between the aggressive and raw power of those screams and the at times angelic singing of vocalist Daniel Tompkins.

I actually think it's kind of a masterpiece, but I also get the feeling that not as many people will appreciate this to the level I and many Tesseract fans will. It might be too far outside of the box, it might be too much in a different direction but for me, it's a world that needs to be explored further and farther.

It's truly brilliant, expressively different and unique in its every detail.

Musings of a Blade Runner character sub-plot...
Tesseract album #4: 7/10
Top picks: King, Smile, Juno

Sonder was released on April 20th 2018 via Kscope:
www.tesseractband.co.uk