TesseracT - "Concealing Fate p.1"

This is part one of the six-song “Concealing Fate” movement by TesseracT. Ex-vocalist Dan Thompkins described it as “a concept album based on life and its obstacles.” In my interpretation, the music tells such an interesting story of struggle and perseverance. This blog post is about the first song in the series, “Acceptance,” which I consider a masterpiece from start to finish. Despite being almost nine minutes long, I’ve listened to this song so many times that it’s one of very few songs I can drum to (my version of singing along, since I have zero vocal talent) without having the song playing. This is the song that got me into TesseracT.

Band: TesseracT
Song: "Concealing Fate part I - 'Acceptance'"
Vocals: clean, screamed

0:00 – 1:14
Sunrise in a post-apocalyptic world, traversing a barren city on foot. Memories of people and places briefly coloring what you see before the vision returns to desolation. 

1:15 – 1:43
The slow eerie guitar in the intro continues in the background when the rest of the band kicks in, detached but impossible to forget, a hawk high above. The way the notes are briefly pulled to the foreground before fading to the background is like thoughts that float to the spotlight of your consciousness before retreating into the mire, or like waking from a dream in the middle of the night before falling slowly back asleep. The intensity of the notes gives this sense of urgency, which is combined with a progression that says "this is the way things are, regardless of how you feel about it." It fits with the post-apocalyptic theme in that the world around you is intense, painful, bleak, but you just have to keep going. 

Jay Postones, the drummer, has an interesting way of keeping the beat but accenting the guitars and maintaining intensity, as well. The simplest way to explain this is to describe each layer:

Base layer: keeping time
 -    Right hand: quarter notes on the china cymbal. This is very intense because quarter notes have lots of space in between them, so it’s basically china…snare!...china…snare!, and chinas are the sharpest-sounding type of cymbal. Here's a clip of Chad Smith from Red Hot Chili Peppers demoing a china
 -    Left foot: 8th notes on the hi-hat. This gives the band a little more support to stay on rhythm
 -    Left hand: hitting the snare drum in the middle and end of the measure. Normal

2nd layer: accenting the guitars
 -    Left hand: in between keeping time on the snare, hitting crash and splash cymbals to accent what the guitars are doing
 -    Right hand: in between keeping time on the china, also hitting crash and splash cymbals
 -    Right foot: hitting the bass drum to give extra kick to these additional cymbal hits. Note that it's completely disassociated from his left foot, which is plodding along eight notes

Basically, this whole thing is like patting you head, rubbing your stomach, juggling, reciting Shakespeare, and dancing simultaneously. 

1:44 – 1:58
Super intense, love it. The lyrics here are “Now show your hands / you have no right to complicate.” The guitars create this rolling feel by having a riff that doesn’t last the entire measure and then repeats before the drums have finished the measure. An abstract way of thinking of it is like Least Common Multiples... if 3 is the guitars and 4 is the drums, they start at the same point but have to go through three measures before they meet up again. I like to imagine the rolling as the deluge/stampede of water horses that Arwen summons in The Fellowship of the Ring.

1:59 – 2:42
This section exemplifies what I love about double bass drumming. Beginning with a rolling, almost skipping feel, it transitions to a heavy, forward-moving rhythm. While single-bass drumming, common in rock music, gets the job done, I find double bass to be such a simple addition that can add so much more to the song. This section is also interesting because the guitars follow the drum pattern, instead of the other way around.

2:43 – 3:21
I envision pushing vs. slackening here, like struggling through opposition but then being pushed down and catching your breath before trying again. This can be as abstract as the course of life itself, or you can interpret it more literally as fighting that huge dog monster on the left.

3:22 – 3:57 
After the intensity of the previous section, you're left catching your breath, alone, distant. I imagine a space battle several hundred years in the future, where you've managed to escape in a one-person pod, a small vessel released from a doomed ship. Now you wander the stars, unsure of your fate.

3:58 – 4:50
The previous buildup and resulting release of energy follow the same pattern as the beginning of the song. Right before this part begins (~3:54) it sounds like a bomb nearing the ground. Then: explosions. Organized chaos while the eerie guitar from the previous section haunts the background and phases in and out irregularly, like a choppy TV screen. 

This section demonstrates really well how a subtle change in the drums can influence the pace and feel. In the first half, Jay rides a large crash cymbal, so the cymbal is still reverberating (making a lot of noise) when he hits it again. This creates a constant sound. In the second half, Jay switches to a china cymbal, which has a much shorter half-life (for lack of a better term). This gives the second half a feeling of movement, of stepping forward with each china hit. Here's an expertly-designed diagram on the right. The peaks indicate striking the cymbal.

4:51 – 5:17
Hopes, regrets, life. As Protest the Hero said in "Tongue Splitter," "If you don't regret nothing, then you might as well be dead."

5:18 – 6:00
I feel this best encapsulates the theme of acceptance in the song. It somehow describes the flow of life as well, pushing again and again, like 5:26 - 5:29 with the bass drum, meanwhile being pulled backwards, as symbolized by the guitar note sliding downwards at 5:27, like a groan or release of breath. Interestingly, the drums follow the opposite crash-china pattern from two sections ago by starting with the progression/steps feel of the china and switching to the broader crash sound in the second half. 

6:01 – 6:16
Explosions, electricity, release of energy. Just silently headbang in acknowledgement.

6:17 – 6:30
This is the same as the previous section but made 'djent'-er. Djent is a subgenre of progressive metal that features palm-muted guitars and often really weird time signatures. (Here's a medley of the band Meshuggah, one of the fathers of djent.) In "Acceptance," the riff now sounds metallic, grinding, more like the cogs of a machine.

6:31 – 6:53
Beautiful, beautiful release. I imagine escaping from a cramped, sweaty, dark factory and flying over a forest, through mountains, perhaps into space. I love how the guitars tone down in the second half, which feels more aggressive and darker. 

6:54 – 7:15
Catching your breath, a moment of serenity. In a space shuttle in the silence of space, looking out the window at the Earth below. Or as in this epic picture to the left, gazing over a hill at two deities in the calm before the storm. A god and his vessel? A savior and a destroyer? Embracing the moment of not knowing. 


7:16 – 7:52
The final confrontation, memories of your path up to this point circling your vision as you proceed to the end. To your judgment? To the next chapter of your life, or of all life on Earth?

7:53 – 8:50
Resolution. The hand has been played, now the consequences are unfolding. The end of the intensity at 8:15, immediately replaced by the sound of the oncoming, of white light, like slowly awakening on your back in the woods, your mouth dry and lips cracked, arms and legs sore with no memory of how you got there. As your eyes adjust, you see footsteps in the dirt leading around the corner, hinting at explanations, symbolized by the quiet, mysterious guitar beginning at 8:30. This guitar is also the beginning of the second part of the Concealing Fate saga, "Deception."

Note: all pictures are from the YouTube videos for "Acceptance" and "Deception." I don't know any of the artist credits, so if you recognize any of these, let me know so I can give credit to the phenomenal job the artists did.