Year : 2013Genre : Teenager Folk Djent Pop
Label : Century Media
Origin : United Kingdom
Rating : 5.0 / 10
Buy it now
The new TesseracT LP spells out the submissively stale stagnation of teenager folk pop djent, all written with pink and magenta on the withered/saggy tits of pseudo-intellectual folk allures and hyper-emotional shoegaze nonsense.
Picture the image of music put forward by Periphery, strip it off of the exceptionally strong melodies and substitute those with polite folk ravings, deprive it from most of its intent to experiment, and deny its manic intricacy - premiere traits not even a latex troll can take away from Periphery's credit in the context of their latest outing to date - and you find yourself in the painfully predictable company of this particular TesseracT record, delivered in the form of play-it-safe-product-art by the eminent UK based teen folk pop djent practitioners. Read on to know more about the disc.
As far as the surface details are concerned, TesseracT conditions/teases its consumer with sloppily concealed neuro-visual programming, as surely all chicks with blotches the size of Plymouth Rock on their faces will appreciate if you pop in a record with an abstract mathematical representation of eloquent process dynamics on its cover. Tattoo "1337!1" on those f33t!1.
It bears mentioning that the title of the release seems to borrow/reference an 1980 movie classic by the very similar title "Altered States". iMDB link - > here. Only, the "Altered States" movie is a more significant cinematic declaration than this particular disk hoped to reserve a spot for itself as a candidate in the chain of consensus long term relevance. The long-term musical relevancy of TesseracT's Altered State is modest at best, as it seems to invite you into an era of calculated sonic stagnation, - no, thank you! - as the mere result of its relatively obnoxious willingness to repeat the predictable and pretentious compositional "methods" it utilizes over and over again.
The spin revolves around the shameless/relentless exploitation of a monomanical rhetorics pair, in which the band trades obligatory-, well constructed computer guitar sequences for emotionally hypocritical-, deeply deceitful folkish über-pretense that constantly wants to convince you of its deepness, despite its evident superficiality. By this, these bands - TesseracT and the other similar pussy djent bands - seek to convey the lingo of Tool, - while the intense parts seek to convey Meshuggah - only, no promise/vicinity of true rhythmic or true melodic intrigue is present in the context of the main themes. Not 9 times out of 10, anyway. Whenever something interesting is happening, the fabric of the polite composition is abruptly interrupted, so finally a brief moment of eloquent musical thought can be smuggled in between two prolonged/tepid/elegiac folk-declarations. Seriously, folks - TUKK!. You can come up with these folk "themes" at a 5 new "motives"/second rate. No true-, well researched thought, only shameless pretense, and series of hollow lies where precious substance of musical thought should be.
These virtually unknown prospects from Switzerland are vastly more experimentive and optimally riskier to listen to than the folkish melodic fakings you will find a GALORE of on this record. Mind us that it is not that I'd have a particular gripe with THIS particular release. I consider the whole pop djent genre a relative disaster in its current form, and generally something not worth suffering a nervous breakdown over. I'm only doing this now to raise public awareness of the terrible, current self-imposed limitations of this genre, as the style seems to be falling in love with those self-imposed limits and schemes. I feel this record is testament of this non-benefitial tendency.
TesseracT, as I have feared, shows sub-zero capacity or related intent of putting forward anything to entertain new directions and fresh ideas, - minus the saxophone, which I think is interesting, but desperate - instead the band collectively hurries into the sour embrace of the perverted and illusionary comfort of not wanting to evolve beyond the constrained limitations that plagued and continues to plague this shape of music since its very own day 1, dragging the listener into the uttermost vicinity of this foul sonic breath that is reeking pseudo-intellectualism and folkish emotional pretense with a blaming index finger in the face of Meshuggah and Tool kept around all the while for good (?) measure. "Look, Jens! This is what you have done to us!" But, despite being relatively non-consequential, - and despite not even sharing the same cosmos as Meshuggah's Koloss - this disc nevertheless is full of itself, and this is what I find kind of perplexing. GOD, the length this record parks its own head in its own ass is measurable only by the utilization of lost Prothean Mass Relays - something which seems to be a hallmark of similar efforts to date.
Having to be cynical does NOT amuse me at all. Cynicism is the revenge of bitterness against ALL. I'm not cynical. I just want to hear good music, and this, I feel, is the mere excuse for it. I wanted this record to be good. Only I feared that it won't happen. Don't call me a pessimist for this. I am not a pessimist. If I'd be one, then I would not have given the record a chance. This disc could have been the previous TesseracT disc, and you could not have a naughty word for that. Perhaps, this is what you want. But then you bow down to vistas that already have been explored, and now I feel that these vistas are getting routinely exploited.
The moment a djent singer has opened his mouth to deliver a folkish sequence, was the moment that put that very cancer into this genre, as this rherotics have become the mere excuse for the deficit of the true-, even provocative thought. It became the mere cover story that seeks to assuage the evident lack of unquestionably expressed musical vision and awareness with polite allures and patterns. "Look, I can sing folkish bullshit to these harmonies!" The presence of memorable hooks, I feel, is few and far between, especially when compared to the Periphery record I have linked the review of earlier. How many times will you be buying the same trick? This TesseracT disk operates not WITH the mentioned cancer, but BY it. This is a terrible tendency, and, if you think I'm embracing the radical herein, then check this particular sequence in track number 2, called "Retrospect" : 4:45 to 4:48.
OMFG. Nervous Breakdown 2.0.
What you have heard here, is the archetypical powerless sigh, which was frequently used by Periphery's exceptionally talented lead singer Spencer Sotelo - the ethos of the powerless sigh itself is a terrible aftermath of the imperturbable emotional pretense-allures of Dream Theater's James LaBrie - but even Spencer ceased to rely on these utterly hollow and dignity-lacking affectations, as these sighs really do not do anything else than exhibit an irate type of begging for your appreciation via a desperate attempt to cover the roaring - and OH!, so silent - lack of sophisticated musical thought - be happy and content with this "fake-attraction". "You-AH!", what have you done with "me-AH!". Powerless sighs or Hell? Hell, all day long, and fuck it, bring the trident dildos, too!
Coming to think of it, I dare you to repeatedly listen to how the TesseracT lead singer sings the end of that word at 4:45 to 4:48 in track number 2, called "Retrospect". I swear to you herein - if there is Hell, then THIS is fucking IT.
The record does not really contain music-novelty in the sense of track structure/overall behavior, instead it contains mathematically engineered direct-to-market "product-art", or "art-product", you know? Because this is what the creators of this product assume your awareness can decipher. For the most part - minus the well sculpted melodic breaks - you do not need to follow this record anywhere, because it does not even go anywhere. In the context of the main themes, it rotates around its own sci-fi folk-axis in salivating lost-in-space sessions for 50 minutes, and seeks to make you feel jolly good about how you are doing the exact same thing for the money you have spent for a deceitful delusion which masquerades its relative overall shallowness as a current and relevant musical experience - in a lazy mind, it emerges successful at that.
I have written much more of this album than I have planned to, so I'm going to say this : the record has its valuable moments with the nicely constructed/computerized - I have no gripes with computerization - rumble segments and eloquently sculpted melodic breaks, - the premiere attractions, really - but the bulk of shitty folk-allures and pretentious late-teenager-drama that permeates the experience and which you need to stomach with your very best pale face stuck on, is simply way too thick and rampant of a shitstorm to endure with a sane mind worth calling one. Certain elements come to mind in which even this particular rhetoric is efficiently conveyed, as is the case in track number 9, "Singularity", with great methods showcased to build the sonic walls by - but exhibitions of this cunning is rare to behold throughout the fabric.
TesseracT's Altered State obediently submits to a now-polite genre's self imposed routine-limitations with quite modest amount of true inventiveness revealed in the process. Risk free sci-fi folk songs orchestrated to sonic cannons. Did any of this surprise me? Not at all. And this is the problem.
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