“A TONE LIKE MUSICAL ELECTRICITY!"

How the two guitarists in Tesseract are putting a new spin on their progressive metal sound, with smoother tones amid the face-melting riffs...

British prog metallers Tesseract have helped shape many of the sounds that define the djent ideology, but on their latest album War Of Being, they are conscious of repetition. A series of "tone quests", propelled by guitarist Acle Kahney, have helped push the band's sound into darker, grittier territories, where the thin, glassy cleans and biting guitars that underscore their previous records have been usurped by body and warmth.

The reformed sonic landscape that Kahney has consequently created helps bring heaviness to the fore, as their riffs get angrier than ever.

Believing that djent is a mentality more than anything else - where virtuosity is in nuanced grooves - Kahney and co-guitarist James Monteith discuss the explorative nature of their new album ahead of a UK tour with Unprocessed and Callous Daoboys...

How excited are you to get out in front of home crowds again?

James: It's our first headline run in the UK since 2018, which was a long time ago, so it's great to be going out and doing our show again and paying a whole bunch of new songs. With Unprocessed especially, we're sharing stages with virtuoso guitar players who are going to make sure that we're at the top of our game. Callous Daoboys are completely different from both other bands as well and have very inventive guitar players. I think it's a real mixed bill of interesting stuff.

War Of Being has some of your darkest guitar moments to date. What inspired the record's grittier edge?