Protest The Hero Announce Europe/UK Volition Tour

Following a successful crowd funding campaign with Indiegogo, Protest the Hero is pleased to announce that the company will be the sponsor of their first Europe/ UK tour of the Volition album cycle. The tour begins in Germany on January 6^th and ends in Holland on February 8^th. Supporting Protest the Hero on this tour will be Tesseract, The Safety Fire, and Intervals.

Volition is scheduled for European and UK release on Monday October 28^th.  As previously reported, the band will be touring the U.S and Canada in November and December. Volition is currently available for pre-order at  protestthero.merchnow.com.

1/6/14-Germany Karlsruhe @ Substage  
1/7/14-Germany Nürnberg @ Hirsch  
1/8/14-Germany Berlin @ Magnet  
1/9/14-Germany Hamburg @ Logo  
1/10/14-Sweden Stockholm @ Klubben   
1/11/14-Sweden Gothenburg @ Fängelset   
1/12/14-Norway Oslo @ John Dee  
1/14/14-Denmark Copenhagen @ Vega   
1/16/14-Belgium Aarschot @ De Klinker  
1/17/14-France Paris @ Divan du Monde  
1/18/14-France Toulouse @ Le Saint Des Seins  
1/19/14-Spain Madrid @ Copernico   
1/20/14-Spain Barcelona @ SalaBoveda  
1/22/14-Switzerland Aarau @ Kiff  
1/23/14-Italy Milan @ Zoe Club  
1/24/14-Austria Salzburg @ Rockhouse  
1/25/14-Austria Wien @ Szene  
1/26/14-Hungary Budapest @ DürerKert  
1/28/14-Germany München @ Backstage  
1/29/14-Germany Leipzig @ Conne Island  
1/30/14-Luxemburg Esch-sur-Alzette @ Rockhal   
1/31/14-Germany Köln @ Essigfabrik  
2/1/14-UK Brighton @ Concorde 2  
2/2/14-UK Birmingham @ O2 Academy2 
2/4/14-UK Sheffield @ Corporation   
2/5/14-UK Glasgow @ Classic Grand  
2/6/14-UK Manchester @ Academy2  
2/7/14-UK London @ The Electric Ballroom  
2/8/14-Holland Dordrecht @ Bibelot  

Review: Tesseract - Altered State

The band Tesseract brings a well done progressive metal/ambient style to the table with their release “Altered State”.

With their funky instrumentation and ambient intertwining of vocals and airy guitar, they remind the listener of a sound not far off from Periphery or Substructure. Although Tesseract is in the ball park of these bands, they still separate themselves from the pack. The most notable aspect of this record would be the vocals. The constantly harmonized and heavily reverberated melodies delve the listener into the immerse sound that Tesseract constantly drives throughout the album.

Although the album is lengthy, it lets the listener fully drown themselves in the surrounding style of the album. With creative mixes of distorted breakdowns with cleaned up and delayed leads, the band proves its originality with their carefully constructed songs like “Singularity”. This song adequately ravels the album into one as well as creates its own place among the other songs.  It keeps the album flowing into the closer “Embers” which leaves the listener satisfied and itching to restart the journey again.

This album has a solidified style that even pokes out from the rest of this genre, but lacks in one category. With this type of sound, bands like Periphery and Substructure deliver enormously in the aspects of heaviness and off time instrument breaks. But with Tesseract, they seem to fall short of the all too anticipated mind blowing instrumentation. The instruments act as a perfect support to the vocals, but when the melodies stop, so does the immersion and excitement. Each instrument break leaves the listener almost waiting until the vocals come up again. The band definitely makes a good effort towards recreating these important parts of the songs, but doesn’t deliver as hard as other bands. What Tesseract does best is their creation of ambiance and immersion with only a few guitar tracks and effects. This aspect makes up for their lack of instrumental entertainment.

Overall this album should fall into the same category as Periphery, but not stay attached to that band. They diversify themselves well enough and with a certain style that keeps them interesting without being unoriginal. Whether the lyrics are of a concept or not, it takes the listener through an aural journey, a rarity among a world of monotonous breakdowns and monotone vocals. This album expresses many emotions and keeps the listener entranced in an almost hypnotic state. These qualities are what differentiate a great album from a revolutionary album. With a future ahead of them, if Tesseract can master their instrumentation then they can master the genre itself. Even with its flaws, this is the type of album that expresses what music really is — an art form.

Rating: 9/10

- Nic Cheatle

Review: Intervals - In Time

Instrumental bands; they are an uncommon commodity. Sometimes you find yourself simply wanting to jam out to some metal that doesn’t have vocals. Luckily that’s where bands such as Intervals come in. Hailing from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the four piece of Aaron Marshall and Lukas Guyader on guitars, Anup Sastry on drums, and Matt De Luca on bass compose the Progressive Metal band Intervals. With an EP already under their name titled The Space Between comes their newest release ‘In Time’.

The album begins with the song “Alchemy”, a spacey futuristic sounding opening, soon after accompanied by their signature guitar, bass, and drum work. Right away you can hear a difference in guitar tone from the previous EP. The tones they’re using on guitar sounds crunchier and more gritty, a more modern ‘djenty’ tone. Fitting for the band’s sound, however it doesn’t do much too much to make the band sound unique. What they do to stand out however revolves around their instrumental work coming together.

Songs like “Mata Hari” featuring a complex rhythm and also a complimenting lead, with instances that are fast and give off that typical djent sound we’ve all known to love; then smoothly flowing into that spacey sound again.  This time with the lead guitar almost bringing you on a journey. The prog-metal elements are definitely seen in the lead guitar, with beautiful riffs tying together their songs. That’s not to say that the bass doesn’t contribute to their songs. I’m happy to hear a band that has their bass guitar actually mixed to audible levels. A good bass tone always ties songs together well, and Intervals are no exception to that rule.

Intervals, thankfully aren’t the type of band to rely on repetitive chugging to hold their songs together and to fill up the space with something unnecessary. Don’t expect anything on the level of Animals as Leaders however, Intervals have gone with a different approach to the instrumental metal genre. Songs such as “Momento” actually seem to have taken inspiration from bands such as Monuments, utilizing a palm muting technique to get what sounds reminiscent of their song The Uncollective. The style in which they use it accompany that dream like flow they have with their leads. There is also a beautiful clean sounding verse on the final song of the EP “Epiphany” that I honestly would have loved to hear more of. Not necessarily in that same track, but in another track or two to extend the EP a bit. It adds character to their work.

I’m disappointed in the length of this release however. Though it is slightly longer than their previous EP, In Time at 22 minutes feels short to me. It starts, and then it ends. The other side of that coin however is that if they were to include more it would have just felt like filler, just something to extend the life of the album without adding anything significant. Now I’m sure there are many people out there wishing that the band would have a vocalist, and I believe it would be unnecessary.

The lead guitar while staying lead, already takes on the role that vocals would effectively enough. Intervals have definitely cemented their place among other instrumental metal bands, and I anticipate hearing more from them in the future, so long as they’re able to keep it fresh and change it up. Make sure to pick up their EP when it drops on October 30, 2012.  

- Christian