Daniel Tompkins – TesseracT ‘Back With Their Very Best’

Posted on September 22, 2023 by roddy666

It’s been five long years, and a global pandemic, since the UK’s progressive metal masters TesseracT released a full-length album. But with the recent release of their fifth long-player, the English quintet have let the world know that they are back, and back in the biggest way imaginable. In a catalogue of classics, War of Being is quite simply their very best work to date, and unquestionably one of the albums of the year, if not the album of the year.

Speaking from old Blighty on the eve of its release, long-time frontman Daniel Tompkins is excited about the work and could not be happier with what they have achieved.

“This one,” he begins, “as far as our contributions go, we’ve really pushed the boundaries with this. We all decided that it needed to be our best album. We’re at a point in our career now, where we feel that we have to keep growing or you’re going to plateau, and we always aspire to grow. So we gave it everything we possibly could.”

Much of the strength of the new record came from the fact that, while lead guitarist and founding member Acle Kahney is still a major creative driver behind the music of TesseracT, War of Being was more of a band-wide effort.

“The songs primarily come from Acle, he’s our main songwriter,” Tompkins explains, “and then I will get hold of early snippets of ideas and lay a vocal on it, and see how it feels. If that inspires Acle to continue with that song, then it normally goes that route. But this time around it was more collaborative, everyone contributed ideas. In the studio we wrote a couple of the songs in full. ‘Legion’, for example, we wrote the whole song in the studio.

“We’ve always wanted to work collaboratively, everyone’s wanted to contribute creatively. The thing is, Acle is such a driving force, musically, that often a lot of what he does sticks. So most of the time there’s very little opportunity for everyone to be creative in that process. This time was different, more of a mixed bag.”

Another factor in the album’s sprawling, epic feel is that it was created, to some extent, as a reaction to the last album Sonder, which clocked in at just 35 minutes and ultimately felt just a touch rushed to the band members.

“We were conscious of the fact that it’s been five years,” he says, “the last album was relatively short, and I wanted to give people as much as possible this time. That album could have been longer by a stretch. But our producer was quite brutal. He was like, ‘get rid of that bit, it’s unnecessary,’ and we lost about five minutes off the album. We had plenty of other songs we could have put on as well. But we had a deadline to meet, and we had to hand it in.

“I think you have to limit yourselves sometimes, the vinyl pressing limits things, unless you want to do a triple vinyl, which turns out extremely expensive. So it was a conscious decision (to make the new album much longer) on some part, but a natural thing in another way, we had so many ideas, a lot of good songs.”

The record is just as deep lyrically as it is musically, and features a very strong philosophical and existential bent, which is explored through the album’s narrative. Tompkins is more than happy to share his thoughts on and give an insight into the album’s concept and lyrical imagery, and fill us in on how the album is feeding into some other exciting projects the band has in the works.

“I’m the band’s lyricist, but our bass player Amos actually came up with the idea of the concept,” he recalls. “It all revolves around a story of two people who experience a tragedy and wind up in this sci-fi/fantasy world and parts of themselves manifest into different characters, and they have this wonderful journey. But if I was to explain it in the most concise fashion, I would say that it does what it says on the tin! The ‘war of being’ is essentially what the whole premise of the concept revolves around.

“Just to backtrack, the previous album Sonder was very outward-looking, it was all to do with other peoples’ lives, and realising that they have complexity within them, that sometimes you don’t realise. This time, we turned the camera inwards and focused on the individual. It’s very much asking the questions, who are we, what are we, what do we stand for, and recognising that ego can sometimes totally take over. It’s about removing the mask away and seeing things with a different perspective and growing from it, and becoming wiser in that process.

“That’s the most concise way I can put it. Otherwise, the actual story behind it, conceptually, is also incorporated into our computer game (which is also entitled ‘War of Being’, and is a single-player VR sci-fi adventure game.) Amos is also actually planning on writing a novella, a whole story, based on the whole thing. It all has a lot of depth to it.”

Tompkins’s voice shines like a veritable beacon on this record, and although his stunning dynamic range and vocal histrionics may sound effortless, he is keen for people to know just how much effort goes into what he does, and how many years of hard work is behind it all.

“I’ve been singing constantly for over 20 years now,” he says, “and I think I’ve gotten to a point where I’m very comfortable with my own default voice, and I can now do things that I couldn’t do five years ago, so that’s a good sign to me. It’s hard, but I get a lot of enjoyment out of it, and I think there’s a bit of magic involved here. When you watch the video for ‘Legion’, and you couple it with the extremities of what I’m doing from a vocal perspective, it looks like it’s no effort, but believe me, it’s the hardest possible thing to do. Sometimes it scares me, because, sometimes only another singer can truly relate to it.

“There’s a YouTuber called Chris Liepe, who’s a vocal coach. He reacted to ‘War of Being’, and he was like, ‘you guys don’t understand what’s going on here, but it is incredibly difficult to do.’ It’s not like I’m just using my character and sitting in a comfortable place. In terms of vocal gymnastics, it’s like being a vocal athlete, and going to that degree. It frustrates me a bit actually, I’d just like people to know and understand the effort that goes into it.”

The other exciting news for Australian fans is that the band has already announced an Aussie tour to promote the release. It’s just that we have to wait until May next year for them to arrive. He promises it will be worth the wait however, and that they will bring a setlist that is certain to keep their myriad fans here very happy indeed.

“We might actually have to think about bringing an alternative set (to what they play elsewhere),” he laughs, “plus we’re playing two shows in Melbourne, we sold out the first night there very quickly, which is fantastic.

“We want to give people what they want. We have quite a varied fanbase that love various albums, so you have to be quite selective and careful about what songs you do. That being said, we have played a lot of similar songs for quite a long time. So I would expect a lot of songs from the new album, with some of the bigger TesseracT songs from the past. We won’t be going down that route of playing songs that perhaps not as many people like or know, the less popular songs. You have to cater to the fans, right? Whatever the case, we’ll make it worth your while.”

Interview by Rod Whitfield (@Rod_Whitfield)

Stream War of Being here