'Piecing Together A Sonic Jigsaw'

When a big time musician is asked how they feel about their upcoming release, 99.9% of the time the answer invariably reflects excitement and an eagerness for other people to hear it. However, Daniel Tompkins, frontman for the now-legendary English progressive metal band Tesseract, is so confident in his band's abilities that he feels no need for sugar-coating or cliches when discussing their forthcoming fourth full-length Sonder.

"In all honesty, I have to say that I'm not all that excited," he admits, speaking from his home studio in Old Blighty, "and that is not to be taken as a negative, it's just because we know what to expect. We're quite happy and comfortable with the material we've written and I think it's going to be received well. I think every album we've released has been different on some level, so it's kind of created its own fanbase. So we know what to expect."

Tompkins feels that the new record will appeal to anyone who has enjoyed any era of the band's illustrious career so far, while still breaking new ground in its own way. "I would say it captures elements from all three previous releases," he reveals. "It's got that abrasiveness of One, it's got the progressive, ethereal elements of Altered State, but it's also got the accessibility of Polaris, so it's a real hybrid Tesseract sound. So, in that, it provides something different, too."

It's been more than two and a half years since the release of Polaris, the band's last album, and Tompkins says that the Tesseract experienced difficulties writing and recording its follow-up. "It was a very bumpy road actually," he confesses. "We started writing small little seeds maybe a year and a half ago, if not longer, and we just seemed to have lots of disruptions along the way when we should have been writing in the studio and getting our heads down."

At least one of those distractions was welcome, however. "For example, last year we got an offer to tour with Megadeth and that's not the kind of thing you turn down!" he laughs.

Tomkins goes on to say that his band don't tend to spend x amount of weeks, months (or even years, in the case of some bands) recording their albums. All the members are spread out geographically with their own home studios and are very much DIY producers, so there is no need to book out large chunks of studio time.

"In true Tesseract fashion, we basically create songs by piecing together a sonic jigsaw," he laughs again.

Something Tomkins is excited about is the massive worldwide tour his band have booked to promote Sonder. "It's going to be a great two-year campaign," he enthuses. "We can feel it. We're quite well-versed in it now, but the exciting thing is that the whole fanbase is growing and the business behind the band is getting bigger and bigger: bigger opportunities, bigger shows, expanding fanbase.

"The trend for Tesseract has been a steady gradient of growth ever since we started and it's exciting. And we haven't plateaued yet, so we must be doing something right."

Tompkins is well aware of the burgeoning Australian progressive music scene and some of the acts it has produced. "There's so many amazing Aussie bands," Tomkins states. "You have to give a shout-out the guys in Karnivool, Dead Letter Circus, Voyager, sleepmakeswaves - there just seems to be so many amazing bands coming out of your country."