Tesseract’s James Monteith says the return of vocalist Dan Tompkins after three years apart helped them pick up from where they left off.
Tompkins split from the band in 2011 and was brought back into the fold in 2014, replacing Ashe O’Hara prior to work on the band’s third album Polaris, which launched last year.
And guitarist Monteith says the UK outfit were fortunate that the lineup shuffle went as smoothly as it did – adding that writing Polaris was “very easy.”
He tells TeamRock: “We’ve been very lucky that things have worked out musically. Whenever we’ve been in our various situations, things have not been difficult.
“Dan re-joining worked out really well for us, because it was like we were picking up from where we left off three years beforehand. Polaris was a very easy album to do – Dan knocked it out of the park.”
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Monteith recalls that they experimented with more “expansive” sounds on the follow-up to 2013’s Altered State, but reports the band might explore new territory in sessions for their next album.
He adds: “We never want to do anything that sounds like anything else and that’s always been a long-time goal of ours. On the last record, we experimented more with soundscapes – they were more expansive. We like riffs, I think tonally we will experiment more.
“We want to try and make sure there’s lots of good songs. I think that’s one thing we got better at.
“Ultimately, we’d like to be better songwriters. I think songwriting combined with different tones and sounds is where we will be going.”
Tesseract will tour Europe in the coming months before hitting the US with Gojira in September.
TeamRock is at Download all weekend. Visit teamrock.com to keep up with all the news, reviews and interviews from the festival as they happen.
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Tesseract 2016 tour dates
Jun 15: Moscow Volta, Russia
Jun 16: St Petersburg Clubzal, Belgium
Jun 18: Dessel Graspop Festival, Belgium
Jun 24: Balatonszemes Rockpart Festival, Hungary
Jul 02: Brighton The Haunt, UK
Jul 03: Milton Keynes Craufurd Arms, UK
Jul 07: Viveiro Resurrection, Spain
Jul 16: Joensuu Ilosaarirock Festival, Finland
Aug 11: Jaromer Brutal Assault Festival, Czech Republic
Aug 13: Rasnov Rockstadt Extreme Festival, Romania
Sep 21: Silver Spring The Fillmore Silver Spring, MD
Sep 22: Philadelphia Electric Factory, PA
Sep 24: Asheville The Orange Peel, NC
Sep 25: Atlanta The Tabernacle, GA
Sep 26: Orlando Plaza Live, FL
Sep 27: Tampa Ritz Ybor, FL
Sep 29: Austin Emo’s, TX
Sep 30: Houston House of Blues, TX
Oct 01: Dallas Gas Monkey Live, TX
Oct 03: Albuquerque Sunshine Theatre, NM
Oct 04: Phoenix Marquee Theatre, AZ
Oct 06: Los Angeles The Wiltern, CA
Oct 07: San Francisco The Warfield, CA
Oct 09: Vancouver Vogue Theatre, BC
Oct 10: Portland Roseland Theater, OR
Oct 11: Seattle Showbox SoDo, WA
Oct 13: Salt Lake City The Complex, UT
Oct 14: Denver Gothic Theatre, CO
Oct 16: Minneapolis Myth Live, MN
Oct 17: Milwaukee Turner Ballroom, WI
Oct 19: Detroit The Fillmore Detroit, MI
Oct 20: Toronto Sound Academy, ON
Oct 21: Montreal Metropolis, QC
Oct 22: Worcester The Palladium, MA
Oct 23: New York Terminal 5, NY
