If you’re like many of us here on staff at Heavy Blog, you’ve been anticipating Tesseract’s third album Polaris pretty much the moment that the band announced the return of Dan Tompkins to the microphone. While former vocalist Ashe O’Hara certainly did a good job on Altered State, his performances didn’t seem to have the same sense of emotional depth and immediacy that Tompkins is able to conjure up. The album is being released worldwide this Friday, but yesterday the band decided that they’d go ahead and let everyone check out the entire thing! Head on over the jump to check it out!
Polaris most likely won’t win over any new fans to the band, as there hasn’t been any radical changes to the band’s sound, but that’s not to say it isn’t chock full of amazing grooves, stellar production and the band’s strongest melodic performances yet. Fans who have already heard the excellent single “Survival” will know exactly what’s being mentioned here; the band’s much more pocket-heavy performances really help give way to Tompkins’ multi-faceted and dynamic performances. While the album doesn’t have the same drastic shifts in emotion that made One so great, it’s found a really comfortable middle ground in which to explore some true moments of beauty. It’s not their strongest outing, but man, if “Seven Names” isn’t one of the best things to come out of this subgenre…
Make sure you check out our review of Polaris as well and let us know what you think about the album in the comments section below!
-KB