Dan Tompkins returned to TesseracT in time to appear on third album Polaris, released in 2015. The record they’d made in his absence – Altered State, featuring vocalist Ashe O’Hara – had marked a significant change in their musical output. But as Tompkins told Prog, the change suited him, and sat well with how he’d evolved his own approach to creativity.
“A TesseracT fan is somebody who wants to be challenged when they listen to the music,” says the band’s singer Dan Tompkins. Given all the changes they’ve been through, that’s probably for the best.
They started out playing a new brand of metal with a progressive edge, before evolving into being a hugely varied prog band with a heavy edge. They’ve changed singer three times; they’ve been appointed leaders of a movement they helped create, only to leave it behind; and they’ve had to face the shift in fanbase that a change in creative course can bring. But the latter aspect appears to have been the least problematic.
While generally TesseracT’s line-up has been stable – James Monteith (guitar), Amos Williams (bass) and Jay Postones (drums) have not changed since founding guitarist Acle Kahney recruited them – the revolving door of vocalists was starting to make Spinal Tap drummers look enduring.
Tompkins, not their first singer, appeared on 2010 debut EP Concealing Fate and 2011 album One, then left. He was replaced by Elliot Coleman, whose American location meant he’d gone by the time sophomore outing Altered State appeared in 2013. That record featured Ashe O’Hara, and saw them ditch the extreme vocals of their debut in favour of an ethereal style that’s become their signature.
When O’Hara departed in 2014, Tompkins returned, and discovered that the musical changes had benefited the TesseracT following. “On the last tour, at the end of the Altered State campaign, we went around Europe with Animals As Leaders and there was a wider variety of different ages,” he explains.
“And sexes, too – we used to have a predominantly male following, but it’s nice to see that’s broadened, with more females turning up and enjoying what we do. It’s growing, and it did especially after Altered State. Going on that twist of moving away from harsh vocals and being more progressive appealed to a lot more people.”
The band’s third album, Polaris, is a far cry from the singy-bit-screamy-bit djent of their first release. For one, the variety of style is markedly increased. Catchy choruses duel with complex layered vocal lines. Crushing riffage gives way to soothing soundscapes. Simple harmonies succeed claustrophobic dissonance. Their Swedish metal influences are clearly behind them at this point.
“When you first start out, you have influences,” says Tompkins. “You don’t necessarily want to be like your influences, but you want to fit in. I think a lot of our early sounds made it very obvious that we listened to a lot of Meshuggah. It takes a long time to find your sound; I think TesseracT have proved that they can write whatever they want, and the fanbase is so steadfast that they’ll get behind it.
“People might not like change initially, but I think they really appreciate what TesseracT is and how it’s an evolving, sonically exploring entity that will always be different on some level. There’s no point in replicating the same thing all the time; you’ve got to keep it interesting.”
Variation and exploration are noble goals and can reap rich creative rewards – but they can come at a price. When Tesseract started, they helped define a nascent metal subgenre, the so-called djent sound that married polyrhythmic heavy guitar riffs and a high-pitched, wandering lead guitar style, with vocals that owed much to the dominant style in heavy metal in the 2000s.
While leaving that behind has obviously benefited them, the band need to be able to maintain an identity of their own – not easy when your sonic palette began in metal and now stretches as far as recent Anathema.
“You do have to be careful,” Tompkins agrees. “Polaris does run the risk of being too varied. I like an album to have a theme to it, at least. You do get a sense of that with Polaris, but there are songs that sound like two different bands at one point, which is an interesting aspect. I like bands like Dredg: I find you can listen to an album like El Cielo and there’s a wide variety of styles, but it still has that undertone that you know it’s Dredg – and I’m sure you can get that from Polaris.”
Part of being identifiably TesseracT comes from Tompkins’ voice – which has radically improved since his last outing with the band, offering a more nuanced performance than on One. That’s no surprise to anyone who kept up with the former policeman’s work during his absence – he’s released (by his estimation) five or six records in that period, including two with Indian metal band Skyharbor, and by working with other singers (Devin Townsend is cited as particularly helpful) has sought to learn more about his voice.
We feel unshackled from any tags. We don’t feel like we have to be genre specific and deal with expectations
He’s also gained much from a career as a vocal coach, a sideline needed to make playing in the band less financially straining – the issue that led to his departure. “The difficulty was that you go away and tour for so long,” he says. “You’ve got a family, a mortgage, and you’re coming home from America with £100 after eight weeks. That’s unsustainable. Luckily for the other guys, they were able to commit to that, for one reason or another. But I just wasn’t in that position. I had to leave and try and survive in my own way.”
Tompkins missed out on the band’s transformation from the metal band they were before to the prog band they are now – best illustrated on Altered State. He has no regrets, however: “That time away was good to me, because I developed my voice and honed in on my own craft.
“I was quite inexperienced as an artist when we did One. I think we all were, to a degree. We didn’t know what kind of direction it was going to go in – we just went with the flow. Altered State was obviously a really dramatic twist in the story for those guys – it was a lot more soundscaped; a lot more progressive in its nature. There was a really developed concept feel. And obviously Ashe’s voice on it was superb. That in itself divided the fanbase a little bit, but it generated new fans as well.
“Now we’re a lot more mature – not just as individuals but as artists as well. This album, is definitely further evolution, but we’re not conforming to any regulations or direction or specification. We’re just being ourselves, just writing music for us. We’re not too concerned about what people want from us, we’re doing what we want to do, which is really quite liberating.
“We feel unshackled from any tags. We don’t feel like we have to be genre specific and deal with expectations. We feel boundless in our exploration of sound and tone.”
The risk of exploring without a map is there’s no guarantee anyone will be brave enough to follow you into the wilderness. What TesseracT seem to be discovering is that the progressive metal world is full of people who will take that risk – and that there are enough strong souls to make the risk pay off.
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