Metal Riot

“It was the best of times, it was the…blurst of times?!”

That about sums it up, as I bang around on this keyboard trying to sum up ways to describe this experience. I witnessed two nights of this unique tour. Twelve dates in the whole tour sold out. UK’s TesseracT headlined with Intronaut pulling double support duty. They played as the backing band for Ben Sharp’s Cloudkicker before their own Intronaut set. All tour long. Playing and mixing all the various instruments on his Cloudkicker recordings makes touring next to impossible. Intronaut finally filled that gap, after three years of planning. Very special. I’ve heard of single musicians doing double duty. Protest the Hero’s drummer did it touring with them and his old band, The Kindred. The Defibulators’ guitarist Roadblock did it as well, playing with The Dixons before a lengthy Defibs set. A whole band doing their set, plus a second set of music that has never seen a crowd is very rare.

TesseracT had a bit of a rougher time. Singer Ashe O’Hara was sick pretty much the whole month, even to the extent of not performing for the sold out dates in both Boston and Philadelphia near the end of the tour. In my interview with TesseracT’s bassis Mos WIlliams, he said the crowd was very accepting of the announcement and filled the vocal void with their own voices. Ashe did perform for the final night at New York’s Gramercy Theater, but he was looking rough when I saw him at Aftershock in Kansas, just six days earlier. Also, second guitarist James Monteith was absent for this tour, as well as the last. Regardless of the hurdles, they powered through and still created a very dynamic and textured atmosphere, very true to their performance styles. I was also treated to an extended photo shoot, both for sound check and their full set.

Click here for the pictures and reviews from both nights. 

After thoroughly entertaining a sold out crown at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus, TesseracT‘s drummer Jay Postones talked with us about the reception of their latest release on Century Media, Altered State. We also hit on tentacle porn and vomit-flavored Jelly Belly beans. It was interesting. Tesseract just finished a tour of the Us and are now touring Mexico. ¡Ir a velos!

Click here for the full interview.

Greetings my sweet cretins and Happy New Year to you all. I, Nich The Hair, deliver to you my top ten metal albums of the year. We here at Metal Riot saw some phenomenally brutal offerings, and some flat out terrible ones as well, this past year from many of the front runners of metal. Picking and choosing this was hardly an effortless task.

So, without further ado, I humbly submit my selections and await the virtual bitch slapping you psychotic know-it-alls are dying to administer.

Click here for the rundown.