Tesseract hint at summer release

Tesseract are planning to launch material later this year to coincide with their appearance at the Download festival.

They released third album Polaris in September last year – but guitarist James Monteith reveals they haven’t stopped since, and are currently sifting through a “mountain of ideas” for a future album. But he hints they could have material out before then in the shape of “re-workings.”

He tells TeamRock Radio presenter Pete Bailey’s The Playlist podcast: “Ideas for album four are very much under way – there’s actually a couple of songs written already and a mountain of ideas that need to be sorted out.

“We’ll probably have another release later this year – not an album but something else – maybe some re-workings. We’re playing with some ideas and we’ll definitely put something out for the summer because we’re playing Download.”

The band have been labelled under the djent banner – a spinoff genre of progressive metal. But Monteith says it’s not a term he now associates with the band.

He continues: “In terms of musicians and friends, nobody ever uses the word ‘djent.’ It was a word used by other people. I had almost forgotten about its existence.

“The bands that were around five, six, seven years ago when this whole djent thing started have definitely moved on, but people still call the collective bands under that banner because it’s an easy way to group sounds.”

Monteith adds: “Tesseract’s sound has definitely evolved in terms of songwriting and it’s definitely headed down more of a prog route.”

The band head out on a UK tour later this week with Nordic Giants and The Contortionist in support of Polaris – Tesseract’s first release since the return of vocalist Dan Tompkins, who’d been replaced by Ashe O’Hara for 2013’s Altered State.

The Playlist can also be downloaded via iTunes.

Scott Munro
Louder e-commerce editor

Scott has spent 35 years in newspapers, magazines and online as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. Scott joined our news desk in the summer of 2014 before moving into e-commerce in 2020. Scott keeps Louder’s buyer’s guides up to date, writes about the best deals for music fans, keeps on top of the latest tech releases and reviews headphones, speakers, earplugs and more for Louder. Over the last 10 years, Scott has written more than 11,000 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog. He's previously written for publications including IGN, Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald, covering everything from daily news and weekly features, to tech reviews, video games, travel and whisky. Scott's favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Cocteau Twins, Drab Majesty, The Tragically Hip, Marillion and Rush.