Tesseract - Altered State (2013)

I can’t keep track of every piece of music there is out there. Yes, this band has toured with Protest the Hero and yes, apparently they are quite known in the global prog scene, but that didn’t stop them from flying under my radar.

I found out about Tesseract sometime last week and decided to give this album a virtual spin mainly because of two reasons: one would be that the band's/album's name is a dead giveaway for a prog release and two, the fact that Tetrafusion (of which I spoke of last year) has a record that is unshamefully labeled, well, Altered State.

So, to recap:

- Tetrafusion - Altered State (2010) and Tesseract - Altered State (2013)

- Both are sophomore releases

- Both bands play in a prog fashion

- Even more, the sound is so ‘cut from the same cloth’ that it’s borderline ridiculous.

What Tesseract is missing, though, is the focus and cohesion that Tetrafusion achieved with the release of their Horizons EP. I mean, the ideas are there and all the musicians know their stuff quite well, but the record just meanders around aimlessly to the point of it turning into background noise; it seems to be just another case of ‘we’re a prog band and we’re going to record an epic album’. It turned out decent enough, but decent doesn’t quite cut it when we’re talking about this type of music.

With that said, I’m waiting for them to release something like Horizons, a perfect example that ‘less is more’ is not just a saying, but an actual advice meant to be followed.

Meanwhile, here’s the free album stream; you’ll be the judge of it.