With their new album out this very week, and a Stateside tour kicking off this week supporting Protest the Hero, heroes of the djent scene TesseracT are undoubtedly very busy, but guitarist James Monteith was kind enough to take the time to sit down and respond to my wild ramblings.

He reflects on the measure of the band’s recent success, the new album, and meeting fans at his least rock-star moment…

Hi James, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions. First up: I hope it isn’t too presumptuous to say it’s been a pretty incredible year for you guys. It’s been a while since I’ve seen any band ‘catapulted’ (and I say this off-handedly because I don’t doubt that a huge amount of hard work has gone into your success so far) in the way you have. So how’s the ride been for you?!

Haha – intense, exhausting and exciting I guess…although I don’t think we’ve had a chance to take our feet of the accelerator and really reflect. Up until recently we were totally D.I.Y. with a plan to achieve as much as we could on our own steam before bringing in any other people or companies. Once we hit our inevitable ceiling, Century Media came in and did a great job of building on our ground work and suddenly we’re here! As I say it’s been non-stop work and has felt quite gradual, but I can see how we maybe perceived as an overnight success! However I don’t feel we’re at all a ‘successful band’ yet, but one who has enjoyed some small successes. We’ve been given a great opportunity, so this is hopefully just the beginning.

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