As time rolls inexorably forward, music’s ability to capture the moment remains its most important trait. Five years on from the release of their last studio album, UK progressive metal titans TesseracT have reached the most significant and creative moment in their career to date. An audacious, ambitious and all-encompassing body of work, War Of Being is an album that could change everything.

Formed in 2003, TesseracT are rightly and widely regarded as pioneers. Since dazzling the world with their debut album One in 2011, they have spearheaded a uniquely adventurous and creative movement that has expanded metal’s vocabulary beyond all measure. Although routinely credited as instigators of the ‘djent’ subgenre, the UK five-piece have long since transcended such associations and are now widely acknowledged as one of the most authentically progressive and unique bands on the planet. From the majestic complexities of One and the bittersweet, melodic crunch of 2013’s Altered State, to the experimental sheen of Polaris and the ruthlessly focused tech-trip of 2018’s Sonder, TesseracT have consistently stood apart from the competition, while forging a musical and lyrical world that is theirs alone. Meanwhile, they have established themselves as a live band of great power, with countless acclaimed shows and festival appearances notched up across several continents.

Fast forward to 2023: Daniel Tompkins (vocals), Acle Kahney (guitar), James Monteith (guitar), Amos Williams (bass) and Jay Postones (drums) have completed work on their fifth full-length album. TesseracT are back, armed with a collection of mesmerising and idiosyncratic new music.

“I think we realised we needed to do something different this time,” says Daniel Tompkins. “It’s been five years since Sonder, and we wanted to mix it up and try something new. With the whole progression of TesseracT in mind, this is one of the most important albums we’ve ever done. You do get further into your career and you think, ‘How long will this go for?’ You can’t predict what’s around the corner. I think we’ve all had a change in outlook on life in the past few years, and so we decided to make this a big album.”

“We’ve always tried to punch above our weight, which is important,” adds Jay Postones. “To stretch it and make it look and sound as big as you possibly can, that’s always been really important, and particularly with this record, because it definitely sounds shitloads better than the stuff we’ve done before!”

There comes a time in the life of every progressive band when the only option is go for broke. War Of Being is a brave and challenging concept album, in true prog tradition. Just as the band’s music has evolved tenfold over the last few years, so has their thematic ambition. A tangled web of personality traits, traumatic events and surreal, off-kilter premonitions, War Of Being is TesseracT’s most detailed and demanding record yet, but also their most profoundly satisfying and complete.

“The concept is massive,” says Daniel. ”Amos is actually writing a novel, based on it. It all stems from his original ideas. In essence it’s about the war within oneself. It asks the question, who are we? It ties into Sonder because that record was about looking outwardly at people around you and realising that everyone has a very unique, independent life, and that we don’t notice because we’re so insular about playing a part in a bigger story. This time, we turned the focus inwards, so it’s a very introspective album.”

“It’s about fighting to forgive yourself for being you,” explains Amos Williams. “That’s something that’s always been quite a struggle for me. That’s where the concept of this war comes from. There’s this set of characters that just popped into life, that represent the various fractious elements of my own personal psyche, and we’re just allowing them to grow, basically, and go on a little bit of a journey. We’ve ended up with a collection of songs that feel like they tell a story. On their own, they work fantastically. Put them together with a theme and a concept, and it feels like it allows you to dive into it more, and it has an extra level of excitement to it, beyond the music itself.”

An immersive voyage through conflict, confusion, enlightenment and resolution, War Of Being is a thrilling and thought-provoking album. From the tantalising, atmospheric rush of the opening ‘Natural Disaster’ onwards, it is a free-flowing but meticulously crafted tour-de-force. Songs like ‘Echoes’ and ‘The Grey’ deftly mould the classic TesseracT sound into surprising new shapes, while the amorphous, unpredictable likes of ‘Legion’ (featuring a monstrous quasi-duet between rhythm section alumni Williams and Postones) and ‘Burden’ stride purposefully away from the expected, weaving ornate melodies around a newly inventive framework of polyrhythmic angularity. Most mind-blowing of all, the towering, 12-minute centrepiece of the title track….

“I think it was the element of being forced to experiment by the very nature of working with (producer) Pete Miles,” says Amos. “He’s a Devil’s Advocate for always trying something different and pushing us into our discomfort zone, and not shying away from a somewhat combative studio scenario! [Laughs] That was quite amusing because he’s also one of the most chilled out people you’ll ever meet. But as soon as it comes to making music, it really is all about seeing what happens when you smash two or three or four egos together. That’s why it probably sounds a little outside of the box known as TesseracT quite a lot of the time.”

“I don’t think any of it was calculated,” says Acle Kahney. “There’s still a big part that’s me writing a chunk of it and making demos. But there was a lot more of us jamming together in the studio together this time, at least for the first couple of weeks. The second half of ‘Legion’ was essentially Jay and Mos jamming, because we had the first part of the song and didn’t know what to do with it. I was busy tracking guitars for another song, and I came back and they’d come up with the rest. It was nice for things to progress naturally like that.”

Taken in isolation, War Of Being is an obvious milestone for this most inquisitive of modern metal bands. However, the lyrics and music are only part of this story. In keeping with their reputation for always looking forward and exploring new possibilities, TesseracT have also been working on new ways to spread the new album’s fascinating message. War Of Being will arrive adorned with startling new artwork created by Amos Williams.

“We’ve always had an album like this, with this presentation, in mind, but it’s always just been out of reach for us,” states Amos. “It’s always been my own personal creative ambition to do something like this with artwork. I wanted to make it almost like stills from a film that doesn’t exist, but giving it a really surreal edge, because the album deals with the way your imaginations spins off.”

Due to be preceded by the release of its colossal title track, War Of Being is the kind of record that every band wants to make. Simultaneously definitive and ground-breaking, it provides a telling snapshot of band at the height of their powers, in thrall to the creative process and hell-bent on shattering boundaries along the way.

“I think it’s been a wonderful vehicle, for us to let loose,” says Amos. “That’s why you can hear everyone doing everything they’ve always wanted to do within the format of an album, and that’s pretty fun! The ambitions get bigger and bigger, every time we achieve one little step. It ain’t getting any easier! [Laughs] Every step is harder and harder, and there’s a gravity that you have to overcome.”

“On the first record, you just want to release an album have it be in the record shops and then go on tour,” says Jay. “Now, we accept that that’s happening, so the goals keep stepping up. It just grows.”

“This has always been a battle,” Daniel concludes. “We’re a modest progressive metal band, but we’ve got big ambitions and we always have. We always strive to get there, and it’s a struggle, but we haven’t lost the enthusiasm for it. We want bigger and better things all the time. This is just the start of it.”

Der blitzschnelle Aufstieg in den Musikolymp und der ungewöhnliche Stil des jungen Sängers und Tänzers NILETTO eroberten im Sturm die Zuschauerherzen. Dieser Künstler versteht es ausgezeichnet, seine anziehende äußere Erscheinung und sein ausgezeichnetes Gesangskönnen mit seinen kühnen Bühnengestalten in Einklang zu bringen. Möchten Sie sich davon überzeugen? Dann dürfen Sie seine Konzerte, die in sieben deutschen Städten nicht verpassen!

Gewagte und ambitionierte Kompositionen abwechselnd mit zarter Romantik – das ist Niletto-Stil, mit dem er alle Charts stürmt. Zu Superhits wurden bereits seine Songs „Kurtka na dwoich“ (Eine Jacke für zwei), „Siren‘“ (Flieder), „Ljalja“, „Aj“ und viele andere. Und den Videoclip „Ljubimka“ (Liebling) sahen 2019 Dutzende Millionen Zuschauer – dieser Clip machte ihn zum absoluten Ljubimka

2020 wurde der junge Sänger mit der MTV Europe Music Awards EMA als Best MTV Act ausgezeichnet.

Von der Kunst NILETTOs kann man unendlich viel schwärmen, deshalb nur das Resümee: Sie erwartet eine heiße Show mit wirrem und energiegeladenem Wind und umwerfenden Choreografien, die keinen Zuschauer gelichgültig lassen. Glauben Sie uns, mit NILETTO wollen alle tanzen!

Reservieren Sie Tickets für NILETTO-Konzerte – dieses Ereignis im Musikleben Deutschlands darf man nicht verpassen.

Auch, wenn man bei dem Namen Maggie Reilly nicht sofort wissend nickt: Spätestens, wenn ein Song der schottischen Sängerin läuft, können die meisten zumindest den Refrain mitschmettern: „Everytime We Touch“, „To France“, „Moonlight Shadow“… man kennt’s. Mit zahlreichen ihrer Hits ist sie auch nach mehr als 40 Jahren auf der Bühne und in den Charts nach wie vor Dauergast im deutschen Radio. Bevor sie mit ihren Soloalben erfolgreich war, war sie außerdem in der Band Cado Belle aktiv, stand außerdem als Sängerin für Mike Oldfield am Mikrofon.

Mit „Survivor“ hat sie dieses Jahr eine neue Single veröffentlicht.

Crystal Fighters have always sought to open themselves up to the world. After all, they’re inherently a fusion concept – part British and part Basque; part old and part new; part pop and part traditional. But when the world changed, so did they. Separated on different continents by the pandemic, the band looked inwards, and started to realise what had been missing. Dialling into the energy of their earliest recordings, new album ‘Light+’ is their most inspired, dynamic, and addictive statement yet, the sound of a band utterly renewed.

2010’s debut album ‘Star Of Love’ introduced them to the world, succeeded by excellent sophomore set ‘Cave Rave’. A decade of lights, camera, and action followed, with Crystal Fighters becoming used to lives of perpetual motion. “I’m always excited to visit different places,” says frontman Seb Pringle. “There’s always something to learn from different music and cultures around the world.”

While this simple message sustains the band, it also pushed them to the brink. At the dawn of the pandemic they were close to burnout, beginning to lose sight of what motivated them. When lockdown came, it was almost blessed relief, a respite from an unwieldy schedule. Drawn to South America by his passion for music, singer Seb sought out the cumbia, champeta and bullerengue rhythms of Colombia. Without a better option as the world started to shut down, he decided to stay put, seeing out the pandemic in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast of the country.  “It felt like living outside of normal time,” he says. “I was on a beach, with not much access to the outside world. It came as a relief, really. I was able to enjoy life, and reflect on my experiences.”

Co-writer Gilbert Vierich remained in the UK, while band mate Graham Dickson saw through these world-changing events from his new home in the United States. Throughout all this the band remained connected – by phone calls, Zoom meetings, and WhatsApp groups. The world may have slowed down, but – if anything – their creativity increased. “We were writing purely for us,” the singer points out.

When he was finally able to return to their base in the UK in the summer of 2021, Crystal Fighters were primed and ready to go. It was as if a fire had been lit inside them, resulting in song after song.  Around 60 tracks were demoed – more than some bands write in their entire career – before the group entered the studio. “There’s an infinite amount of new things you can do with music,” he says. “That’s what keeps me interested. It’s how you can mix old and new music, traditional sounds with cutting edge electronic music.”

The idea was simple: to give fans a fresh definition of Crystal Fighters by returning to their core values. As a result, ‘Light+’ is packed with ideas – from rave workouts to tropical pop, from hints of cumbia to delicious pop melodies. “We wanted to get to the roots of who we are, and how we felt when we were first coming up,” the singer points out. “When we only wanted to make music for ourselves, and to make people dance at our shows.”

Old friends Charlie Hugall and Luke Smith returned to produce the new record, with additional help in the electronic arena from Ghost Culture – whose collaborative record with Falle Nioke became a mutual soundtrack for the group’s lockdown activities. A band unleashed, ‘Light+’ feels unforced, natural, and completely true to their back catalogue. Take new single ‘Manifest’ – constructed with the help of FYFE, it opens with crisp guitar chords before surging into a heady 80s inspired synth feels, blessed with light, hope, and a quiet sense of urgency. “It’s about chasing the setting sun,” says Seb. “The freedom that travel can bring; and escaping the confinement we all felt for so long in our lives. Something so many still dream of escaping.”

In a way, the single points to the energy of the album as a whole – it’s about embracing freedom, and making people move. Looking to their live shows, Crystal Fighters have a way of zeroing in on a frenetic and reckless disregard for convention. “Our rule was, if you want to play fast, then play fast. In the live shows, our favourite moments can be incredibly fast, and kind of chaotic… but in the collective energy it all hangs together.” It’s also an album of deep emotion, however. Take ‘Carolina’ – a real-life love story set in Colombia, it’s a homage to a woman Seb fell for, someone who escaped the rat race, and made her way to the coast. “She was living a different life… with not a lot of money, but a lot more happiness. I wanted to tell her story, of how she claimed her freedom by letting go of what society expects of us to pursue her own dreams. Living a life you enjoy rather than living for your work.”

Lyrically, the band move from grand, thought-provoking statements – ‘Multiverse’ and ‘End The Suffering’ – through to simple ‘boy-meets-girl’ pop songs. “It’s the contrast,” Seb says. “Real life has to happen as well. Each of us is looking for love, or pining over a situation in our lives. It’s honest to write about that, as well as something that’s a bit more spiritual. It speaks to who we are as a band.”

‘Love x3’ started as an acoustic idea, before becoming a lush tropical onslaught, asking fans to open their hearts once more. “It’s asking for us to experience love as a collective. It’s what can sustain us, and heal us as a society,” he says. “We’re all in need of real connection. And we need music that speaks to us as individuals, as people who are fallible, and need help. Sometimes life can be a very tough place to be. Music can really help people open up.”

Scorching album highlight ‘Tranquilo’, for example, takes its name from a carefree expression common across the Spanish-speaking world – put simply, it means ‘all good’. “We wanted to capture that vibe, and take it over to English-speaking cultures,” he says. “It’s a reminder of that familiar feeling of when we want to be all calm and chill, but reality gets in the way. It’s asking people to step back from the traffic of your thoughts, and observe them. Life can be hard… so you’ve got to take it easy.”

Right now, Crystal Fighters are living their lives in a ‘tranquilo’ fashion. Each moment counts, and they take life for what it is. “It taught us the value of collaboration,” he says. “The time we spent apart mellowed us all out, in a certain way. We’re happier than ever, and we want to use our platform to deliver our message to the greatest number of people that we can. As the album says, more light. More positivity, more clarity. We all need more hope in our lives.”

Crystal Fighters are like a burst of light in the darkness – soon the sun will be coming up, and the party can begin.