Tesseract are no strangers to the prog metal tradition of the epic length song suite; their first ever release and crowning achievement thus far is the 20+ minute song Concealing Fate. Clearly, they can pull it off, and I’ve been hoping for them to keep that style of songwriting a major part of their discography moving forward. As it turns out, according to the band’s label Century Media Records, their upcoming album Altered State will consist of a single 51-minute song. Whaaaat?!

Okay, while it’s about guaranteed that the track will be split up into more bite-sized chunks, this bodes well for the album on virtue alone. Tesseract have proven to be brilliant songwriters, and they’ve shined brightly so far within the context of recurring musical themes and reprises. Albums that tend to be written in this form have been highlights of the genre, a la Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and The Parallax II: Future Sequence.

Not that there was any doubt that Tesseract would deliver, mind you. Now we just have an interesting bit of information to cling to as we wait for Altered State to drop later this year on Century Media Records. I wonder how their latest single Nocturne fits in on the record, if it even makes it to the album to begin with. You can stream the single below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqLPb0_ygKk&w=560]

UPDATE: Guitarist Acle Kahney confirmed with us that both ‘Nocturne‘ and a reworked version of the teaser demo the band released with Elliot will be a part of the epic suite. Listening to both together, one can hear a recurring musical theme from around 1:30 in ‘Nocturne‘ and 1:17 in the demo. Interesting!

– JR