Tesseract's highly conceptual
Concealing Fate (a mini-opus composed of six interlocking parts) has the distinct quality of initially eliciting enraged cries of "Not another
Meshuggah clone!," soon to be followed by relieved comments along the lines of "Oh, now that is interesting." Some clarification: though the members of this British progressive outfit are undoubtedly enamored with that Swedish group's idiosyncratic rhythmic complexity and palm-muted riffing -- the so-called "djent" style -- they are hardly slaves to it. Rather, notable offerings like "Acceptance," "Perfection," and "Origin" unexpectedly break out into chorused clean vocals, dense melodic textures, sweeping synthesizers, soothing atmospherics, inventive percussive clusters, funky slap-bass, and much more -- all of it astonishingly fluid of execution and surprisingly uplifting in nature, for some much needed contrast against the blunt force attack cited to begin with. In all honesty, by the time
Concealing Fate nears its end, one almost wishes that the djent elements would just get tossed in the garbage bin entirely, so that
Tesseract can get on with the much more adventurous and original experiments also characterizing their sound. At all events,
Concealing Fate is a promising first effort. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia