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Review: TesseracT/Unprocessed, O2 Academy
Boasting a three guitar line-up, Kerrang!-approved young Germans Unprocessed are part of a seemingly endless wave of tech-metallers combining dexterity with melody in Periphery/Polyphia style. Frontman Manuel Gardner has the somewhat arduous task of singing and playing simultaneously, but pulls it off with alacrity. Even a power failure during their last song doesn’t stop Unprocessed, simply providing an opportunity for an impromptu drum solo.
They don’t appear to be bringing anything new to the party, and they’re not above pulling every old-school audience participation trick in the book (the circle pit, the wall of death, the ‘mobile phones held aloft’ gambit, etc), but this audience seems to love them anyway.
is needed now More than ever
‘TESSERACT: SOLD OUT’ reads the sign on the door. It’s taken the Milton Keynes prog-metallers the best part of 20 years to get to this point, but tonight they’re playing their biggest ever Bristol show, augmented by a very impressive and presumably exceedingly expensive set of stage lights. That’s quite an achievement given that at one point it looked as though we might have to dump them in the ‘also-ran’ file after they got through five singers in the course of a decade. The turning point came when Daniel Tompkins returned for a second stint with the band, his clear and distinctive vocals helping them to stand out from the ever-expanding prog-metal pack.
TesseracT’s latest release is a bold, fully-fledged concept album, War of Being, with accompanying computer game, proposed novella and multiple additional spin-offs. Like all the best concept albums, it’s a rather convoluted and opaque epic that seems to have connected strongly with their audience.
The show opens with two tracks from it, Natural Disaster and Echoes, both of which work powerfully as standalone pieces when detached from the overarching concept. Later in the set, the lengthy title track proves an absolute monster, with Acle Kahney and James Monteith weaving those trademark djenty guitars over Jay Postones’s tricky polyrhythms.
They also play plenty of songs from previous album, Sondor, with King, Smile and Juno even prompting audience singalongs while Tompkins dances around the stage as if he owns it. Which, in a sense, he does.
It’s a well balanced, skilfully paced 90 minute set, delighting the faithful and newcomers alike. But those who’ve followed the band since their inception are specifically rewarded with the encore: the opening two parts of TesseracT’s debut EP, Concealing Fate. Inevitably, the mosh pit opens up and Tompkins is almost swallowed by it as he leaps atop the barrier.
All pix by Mike Evans
Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: February 2024
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