Amos Williams of Tesseract
by Cameron Edney
Guest Staff Writer
This week Progressive Tech-Metallers TesseracT has touched down in Australia and they are about to embark on what is set to be one hell of a tour alongside metallers Periphery! Since releasing their brand new album One earlier this year the band has played countless shows around the world touring with the likes of Maylene and the Sons of Disaster and Protest the Hero.
Earlier this month TesseracT took part in the UK Sonisphere festival which also featured Slipknot, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax and many more, playing to record numbers it’s easy to see this bands popularity growing by the minute and rightfully so! Kicking off their Australian tour tonight in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne will follow over the course of the weekend. I had the pleasure of catching up with the bands bassist Amos Williams shortly after the bands Sonisphere performance to talk about the experience, touring across Australia for the very first time this week and the bands future plans, this is what Amos had to say!
Hardrock Haven: Hey Amos, thanks for taking the time out to chat with us today, no doubt you guys are still coming off a high from performing at the UK Sonisphere festival?
Amos Williams: We’re great man, we just finished the Sonisphere Festival here [in the UK] this weekend and that was absolutely incredible. It was great to be part of the general metal and rock scene now and becoming a part of the metal populace is brilliant. The band is now considered professional, considered part of what’s happening and what’s going on and it’s what people want to see. The actual show was incredible because the tent was sold out and there were as many people outside as there was inside. We’re all a little bit tired so we’re taking some time off before getting back into rehearsals before heading to Australia to see you guys.
Hardrock Haven: The Australian tour kicks off in Brisbane on July 29. You must be very excited to be finally heading our way?
Amos Williams: Yeah it’s gonna be fantastic. In the UK we get to see so much of what’s going on in Australia because we’re so closely linked and it will be nice to finally come down there and see what the reality is as opposed to what is going on in Ramsey St or what’s going on in the various other soap operas you’ve got going on down there, so it will be good to see the reality man!
Hardrock Haven: This is your first trip down Under and unfortunately it is a whirlwind tour playing just the three east coast dates, will you guys have much time to see many of the sights whilst here or is it all business no pleasure?
Amos Williams: Sadly it’s all business mate! We fly in eight or nine hours before the first show and then we fly out again two hours after the last show, we’re just so busy at the moment. I’m a bit gutted because my dad used to live down in the south-east and it would be amazing to go and see where he was living. He had built a house down there, I’m thinking, wow I’m going so far and all I’m going to see is the back of some venues, some dressing rooms, a couple of airports then off again!
Hardrock Haven: For the lovers of heavy progressive rock that are interested in getting along to these shows to check you out live, how would you best describe the band?
Amos Williams: We’re actually pretty intense live… most progressive rock and tech-metal bands have a bit of a reputation for just standing there and fiddling away on their guitars but we’re different to that cause the music isn’t so technical in terms of having to play lots of notes very fast. It’s more about the details and the expression you can get out of the instrument and the control over the instrument and that gives us a lot of lead way to put a lot of emotion and energy into everything. We’re very exciting to watch, we try to give you guys as much as you give us instead of just standing there and looking a bit awkward. It’s going to be a bit weird cause we’re going to be jet-lagged as fuck!
Hardrock Haven: Amos earlier this year you released the full-length album ‘One’ and it was received very well by the critics and progressive rock fans. Looking back over the writing and recording process is there anything you would have changed?
Amos Williams: Not really, actually if there was one thing, I’d love to be able to go out and tour the album for a year before we record it but I don’t think that’s really possible. Obviously things weren’t perfect but that’s the way life is. I think that if things went along perfect the album would have turned out sterile and generic. There are things that you can’t plan for that force you to behave and react in a certain way but that’s created little moments of magic along the way. We did release a Dvd along with the Cd to show where the music developed into because we recorded this over a long time. We didn’t just go into a studio and walk out six days later with the album. it took us a good two years and we thought that the music itself had moved on a little bit so perhaps we should show people what was happening now.
Hardrock Haven: I would imagine that a lot more effort and time is put into an album like this rather than a typical four chord rock album. No doubt at times the process can become frustrating, take us through the process for doing an album like this?
Amos Williams: It’s really slow and we don’t really design a time scale for these things. Depending on what we’re doing touring and promo wise it dictates when we get stuff finished. Even though I said it takes us a long time I guess when you really break it down it only took us about six or seven weeks to record, edit, mix and master and that’s fairly short, but the writing will start with our guitarist Acle [Kahney], he’ll come up with some idea’s, he will fire Mp3’s at us via the internet, we listen to them, learn them, make suggestions and then we will talk about it more and start to develop it. One that’s stage has happened we will get into a rehearsal room and check things out cause what works in a studio very rarely works live and it needs to be changed here and there or it feels better if you change it slightly. After that we go back with another demo and see how it sits. We’ve gone out and played some songs live and say “oh that sucks” and go in and change it again. To be honest, we change it right up until the process of the final mix. As you see on the Dvd even after we finish the final master things still change live, it’s constantly evolving, there’s never a final statement with it.
Hardrock Haven: Mate, with the Australian tour about to kick off and the album release doing really well, what other immediate plans are in place for TesseracT?
Amos Williams: We’re doing a headlining tour in the UK in September and we’re going to be announcing a US tour in a couple of months for the end of this year and we’re in the middle of negotiating loads of different tours that will lead right up to next year’s festival season, so hopefully we will be doing festivals again and we want to be able to head back down to Australia and through Asia as well.
Hardrock Haven: Amos, thanks once again for your time mate, I hope you have a blast whilst here in Australia even though the time will be brief! Do you have any last words for our readers?
Amos Williams: Listen to our stuff, buy it or steal it whatever. If you like what you hear please come along to the shows!