I'm back guys after what feels like forever. I have alot of stuff to cover in the next couple of weeks so buckle down everyone. Also happy, possibly late, Hallowe'en everyone and hope you've enjoyed your time on the day of scares. Without further ado, let's get to the review at hand.
TesseracT is a modern progressive metal band inspired by Meshuggah, and have taken to the skies and the stars with their musical talents. Their discography is relatively small, consisting of only three albums and an EP, and still manage to defy boundaries and experiment with their more trademark space metal thing. This is, as you can see, a very respectable band.
Polaris is an album that is kind of mixed. No, I don't mean, some like it, some hate it, I mean some prefer it to their 2013 album Altered State and some don't. (Besides, it's kind of hard not to like this band.) I personally have listened to them both and can say that I prefer this over Altered State, but just barely. You see, Altered State does have that spacy atmosphere like you'd expect, but they kind of drop it halfway through for more heavier grooves. This keeps that atmosphere all the way through, for the most part and then adds in a nice contrast of heavy grooves, like in Dystopia or Cages, to some more softer grooves or just one riff altogether, like in Utopia, Seven Names and Messenger. Is it consistent? Yes and no because it keeps the overall spacy atmosphere as mention but the music behind that is more of what they decided to do with it. Also most of the tracks here, there's 9 by the way, are in the 5-6 minute range with a few exceptions of course. This could very easily make or break an album for some because of consistent track length, believe me, I've noticed. It does bring the score slightly down for me, at least Altered State had Of Matter which was 14 minutes long, but it doesn't even come close to breaking it. You can still something completely different in each and every track, and they do, although some of them are kind of subtle to be honest. Yeah, this is ultimately one of those albums as well, but does give you some great replay ability so you can catch something else you have never caught the first 100 listens. That's part of what atmospheric or ambient centered music good and more listenable, at least for me. It certainly isn't the best, but it is well up there in terms of just how tranced you are by this vast and vivid space around you. On one final note, have you guys noticed how many space-themed albums this year? From my understanding we have had Breaking Benjamin-Dark Before Dawn, though I'm not entirely sure it was intentional, Arcturus-Arcturian, though they're named after a star so of course, Midnight Odyssey-Shards of Silver Fade and of course this. I'm sure I'm missing a few but not only is this the year of comebacks, but also the year of space albums.
Ok, on to the ratings, I give this album a 9.5/10. It really is amazing as well as the band themselves. I highly recommend this one. With that, I am the Grim Reaper, signing off.