Daniel Tompkins releases new video for Ruins

Daniel Tompkins & Paul Ortiz — (Image credit: Richard Oakes)

TesseracT singer Daniel Tompkins has released a video for Ruins, the title track from his upcoming new solo album, which will be released through Kscope on December 11.

Ruins, the follow-up to Tompkins' Prog Award-winning debut album, 2019's Castles, takes a more aggressive and darker approach than the electronic debut. Whilst the the lyrical and conceptual side still represents the same ideas, the new version Ruins is significantly different to Castles with the addition of Tompkins’ signature aggressive versus clean vocal style. It was felt that renaming the album and each song was appropriate and aside from the lyrics, it is essentially a completely new album.

“Ruins is a rollercoaster of a song and a true reflection of all that we're about, musically," he explains. "It touches on the original concept surrounding fractured relationships, tragic mistakes, compulsion and addiction - the things that can cause irreparable harm to people's lives and Ruins represents the aftermath.

"The song was co-produced between my good friend Paul Ortiz (Chimp Spanner) and myself. Having released Castles in 2019 (Produced by Eddie Head) I had the urge to recreate and inject a new life into it as a prog rock/metal record with the help of Paul who rewrote the music from scratch. Vocally, I really feel that this track is a very honest reflection of where my head is currently at and perhaps a nod to things to come both vocally and musically!

"The music video produced by Kyle Kadow and Steven Cleavland of Found Format Films see's Paul and myself performing for the first time with a guitar in hand on green screen with some fantastic VFX. The style and theme of the video, inspired by the original song Castles, centres around the theme of corruption, compulsion and revenge, as we see the characters slowly intoxicated by their own greed, ultimately leading to their own destruction and their lives left in Ruins.”

As well as Ortiz, Ruins also features guest appearance from Australian prog guitarist Plini and Trivium's Matt Heafy.

Pre-order Ruins.

Artists

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.