Band:	TesseracT
Album:	One
Style:	Djent, Progressive math metal
Release date:	March 22, 2011
Guest review by:	Unhealer

01. Lament
02. Nascent
03. Concealing Fate
    1 - Part One - Acceptance
    2 - Part Two - Deception
    3 - Part Three - The Impossible
    4 - Part Four - Perfection
    5 - Part Five - Epiphany
    6 - Part Six - Origin
04. Sunrise
05. April
06. Eden

The word "djent" has been on lots of lips recently. Fans, haters, and unbelievers have a word or two regarding what apparently is a growing branch of the metal scene, "accidentally" referred to after an onomatopoeia. Whatever is your opinion on this, it's undeniable that there is a rather talented group of bands revolving around the concept of taking Meshuggah's legacy to further extents, and TesseracT is one of the first bands of the pack that have caught the attention of a considerable amount of ears by pursuing this task.

One is an album that relies heavily on groove, with clean and distorted parts for balance. The band insists on maintaining a syncopated rhythm skeleton at all times and rarely reaching fast tempos. There are very few chord-based sections or relentless palm-muted thrashes, and don't even think about tremolo picking. The guitar work mostly consists of 7-string groovy riffs that shift between low and high notes, clean arpeggios and some peaceful leads to add some ambiance; but even when the guitar leads go for another approach, the rhythm section of the band will still keep a tight groove with the drums and a percussive bass.

It seems the band insisted on giving themselves sort of an identity by focusing on this signature sound, but as a result there is an evident lack of diversity and the record can get tiring as the mid-tempo groove goes on and on until the very last bit of an album that clocks around 55 minutes.

Vocally, the already ex-singer Dan Tompkins impresses with his flawless high pitched singing and delivers with mid-ranged screams that denote an effort to keep his vocals chords away from danger. Both types of singing are spread equally throughout the record, but perhaps the clean vocals feel a bit more prominent with all the studio spice applied on them. The production sounds extremely digital and compressed, but this is just another premise of this musical style. Every instrument is carefully processed through several gadgets and a fair amount of effects are added, mainly for the clean guitar parts. This gives a virtual feeling to the whole thing despite the fact that every note is human-executed.

TesseracT delivered with a sound that may be appealing for metalcore, progressive, and probably some melodeath fans. Only the future will tell if this so-called djent genre will prevail on metal history as a die-fast trend or actually provide an interesting bundle of fresh sounding music to look up to; and these British guys are surely heading for the latter path.

Outstanding songs: "Nascent", "Concealing Fate"

Watch the entire outstanding studio performance of "Concealing Fate" uploaded by the band here.