I went to go and see Tesseract last night (Wed 5th November 2014) at Sound Control, Manchester, with Animals As Leaders and Navene K as support acts. This is the third time I’ve seen Tesseract live… I saw them live without knowing their music last year and that caused me to get into them, I saw them again after getting into them, and now I’ve went to see them a third time with my Brother. My brother loves Tesseract like yo fat momma loves Big Macs.
The previous times I’d seen Tesseract they had Ashe O Hara on vocals, but this time, they’d lost Ashe and been reunited with original singer Dan Tompkins (no relation to fictional doctor Leslie Tompkins). I am a huge, huge fan of Ashe, so I was a little skeptical going in, but on this evening, I learned that Dan is an awesome front man, punching the air to all the Djenty rhythms and getting everyone psyched up. His voice was incredible, very talented dude. It was pretty much like Killwitch Engage getting Jesse Leech back and still being awesome even though I preferred Howard Jones. I prefer Ashe, but that in no way takes away from what an amazing singer Dan is (amazing being appropriate seeing as how he says the word “amazing” a heck of a lot in his stage banter.)
The setlist was more focused on Dan era material, and the heavier end of that, but still with all the great stuff from the Ashe era too. The band were as awesome as ever, with the band’s clear leader and genius Amos Williams rocking the house and keeping the ship afloat with sheer power and enthusiasm. Everyone else, as usual were superb musicians with great flair and kept up to their usual high standards. Great band. Really seem to love playing too.
It was a pretty great gig. Nice venue with good sound (I’d never been to Sound Control before, but I’d happily go back!). Some selfish-jerk crowd surfers started pissing people off but I never got hit by one so I didn’t get too annoyed personally, I just saw a lot of people being upset by them.
Oh yeah… the support bands. The opening act was one guy, called Navene K, on his own, with a mounted guitar and a drumkit, and he’d play one, then the other, switching between the two, playing a mixture of Djent and Dance music. It was really good and the guy was an astounding drummer. Very entertaining.
Animals As Leaders were incredible. I was skeptical of an instrumental band live. Can’t sing along. No focal point? But… nope, it was really good. And people went nuts for it. Circle pits and everything. They cheered for parts of songs. Parts. And multiple parts per song. Some of the music was so complex people cheered when they pulled it off without messing-up. Once they even sang along with the music. Literally sang ‘doodle—ooh, ooh, — dooodleoodleoodllle –ooh.’ It was charming.
They really won me over, and I’m very glad to have seen them.
Anyway, in summary, the support bands were good and the headliners were excellent too. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Tesseract concerts are an excellent way to spend your time. Get yourself on down to one… and P.S. Altered State is a masterpiece.
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