TesseracT Guitarist Provides Update on Next Album
TesseracT guitarist James Monteith was our guest on this week’s episode of The MetalSucks Podcast. James provided an updated on the writing process for TesseracT’s next album and when it might come out, discussed how his day job as a metal publicist has been busier than ever during the pandemic, the current climate in the U.K. as they go into their second shutdown due to Covid-19, and a number of other topics.
On the current status of TesseracT’s next record, the follow-up to Sonder (released in April of 2018):
“Still working on [writing]. In terms of timing, we were basically going to have a very quiet year this year, I think we had one festival planned and there was supposed to be a small tour of South America which keeps getting pushed back, pushed back. That’ll happen one day. We’ve been really really lucky in that sense [that touring plans weren’t greatly affected].
“We’ve been spending a good amount of time working on new material, [but] an album isn’t there yet. We’re hoping to have one done by early-mid next year. I’m not entirely sure when it will be out. Can’t really put a date on it but we’d love to have something out by the end of next year.
“In all honesty, what was quite nice about this, is for the last couple of records it has been quite a hard deadline. With ‘Sonder’ in particular, the end process ended up being a bit rushed and there were certain things that we weren’t quite happy with and yeah, we would have liked to spend more time on it but to hit deadlines. Whereas now deadlines are completely gone, and we can go as long as we’d like. It could work against us and we could just take forever, on the flip side, but we’ve been able to spend a lot of time on this record and make it as good as it possibly can be.”
On how he has been busier than ever at his job as a publicist during the pandemic (after in initial dip in the initial months):
“Most of what I do is working on record releases and if anything, the latter half of this year, it feels like there’s been more records put out than ever before. It seems like when the first lockdown happened, everybody stopped their plans and they were like, ‘OK, let’s see what happens,’ and there was a bit of a dip. And then once labels and bands and so on realized this Covid thing is not going away any time soon, everyone went back to business as usual, I guess. Artists are still going to write music, albums are written and labels want to get them out.
“It does feel like it’s not sustainable because without touring eventually the entire industry is going to run out of money. But I feel like at least in terms of what [TesseracT] are doing, we’re kind of writing at our own rate, which is lucky, I think.”
On the recently reinstated lockdown in the U.K. due to resurgent rates of Covid-19 infection:
“It’s not quite as strict as the last one, but that’s effectively what came in as of last week. What’s changed here is they’re basically being more flexible if you’ve got to travel for work. The first time around it was like, everyone staying at home, you can only go out to get food or to exercise for an hour max. Whereas this time around the rules are way more vague. And it kind of feels like nobody is really paying attention to this [laughs]. Everybody is used to it now whereas the first time around, it was pretty… it wasn’t frightening, but it was like nothing we’d ever experienced before. Yeah. Interesting times.”
You can listen to our entire chat with James right here or below.
