Album Review: Tesseract – “Sonder”

Tesseract have achieved the impossible: they have made me love a prog metal album, specifically Sonder. The reason I love it is because it not just an album full of boring progressive metal; it has a little bit of a groove feel to it, some Eastern influence in some of the songs, and a nice variety of vocals from clean singing at a higher range to impressive screams. “Luminary” got my attention right away and is one of my favorites on the album. It starts off really aggressive and takes no prisoners from the first note. Then it calms down a minute for sweet vocals before it goes into the addictive chorus. “Beneath My Skin” is another favorite of mine. It builds and builds and raises the hair on your arms. There is this discordant, sinister sound that runs throughout that gets your heart racing. It is an addicting track and I cannot get enough of it. “Juno” is a great track, as well. It starts off more high-tempo in comparison to other tracks and is definitely a little bit more groovy; it is a song you will have to move to.

Sonder has really thundering bass, heavy drums, and great guitar throughout the entire album. The vocals are loud and clear no matter if they are screaming or singing. Sound-wise, it is a very consistent album. It feels like each track is a piece of a puzzle; as you listen to each track, you add another part to the puzzle and another part until you reach the very last second of “The Arrow,” when everything is finally in its place. This is an album that you will have to listen to several times. There are a lot of interesting and unique things that will not be picked up the first, second, or even third time around. The length of the tracks vary; two tracks are slightly over two minutes long and one track is over six minutes long, but the majority of them are around four or five minutes.

Sonder is definitely a cerebral album and one that should be enjoyed by casual lovers of music as well as listeners who love to dissect each and every little part of a track. Tesseract have done a great job and I highly recommend you pick up this album, out 4/20.

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Post by Karen Shalev

What did you think of Sonder? Comment below.

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