Devin Townsend Project - Fear Factory - Tesseract

Tesseract have been in vocalist purgatory as of late, Ashe O'Hara their latest offering to the poisoned microphone seems here to stay. The impact he makes is immediate, welcome back the soaring vocals that truly complement the intricacies of Tesseract's message. Deception and Acceptance sound stunning with their Djent rhythmic rumblings, Ashe putting his own stamp over proceedings and pulling it off convincingly. A great start to this evening's entertainment.

Fear Factory have really been through the wars in the past few years with regards to their revolving line up changes. With the ever present Burton C. Bell and Dino Cazares keeping the flame flickering Fear Factory is slowly becoming a heavy metal casserole of rhythm sections. It all begins quite promisingly Shock, Edgecrusher and Smasher/Devourer pile from the stage like a mercury tsunami, Burton holding up well. Things then take a slight shift with Burton struggling on the softer moments that require a little more restraint. The will is there but sadly the throat is not having any of it, Lynchpin and Martyr save the day to some degree and the crowd don't seem to care, loving every last chug of Dino's guitar. Replica brings proceedings to an end with plenty of audience filling in, Fear Factory scraped by tonight, a valiant effort.

Great walls of Jericho? Is Devin STILL touring? There simply is no stopping this machine of music and ideas peddling his wares and pimping out Ziltoid to anyone who wants to put their fist into him. Last seen at the extraordinary Retinal Circus Devin tells me beforehand he's not been home for over 6 weeks, he's tired but you'd be hard pushed to tell as he takes to the stage. Parading and pulling poses for the massing photographers (including myself) Devin never drops in form. Without the presents of Anneke van Giersbergen he still manages to put on one hell of a performance even if his ailing body and voice is telling him otherwise. 'Supercrush', 'Juular' and 'True North' swathe over the crowd in a mass of Devin infused brilliance and power. You can forgive him for his voice not being as powerful tonight the fact he's here is good enough for many. With the Retinal Circus and numerous tours coming to an end it's still good to see Devin loves the live work and puts so much effort into it. As usual the 90 minute set comes to an end all too quickly but I'm sure Devin will return to these shores soon enough.