Engram of Decline

Fractal Universe operate in the shadow of their French compatriots Gorod, playing a style that could be described at times as groovy, at times jazzy, often a little more progressive than the latter, and pretty technical as a whole. The comparison is particularly hard to avoid in the tracks Sons of Ignorance and Narcissistic Loop, which prominently feature a groovy main riff that is accented with dissonant chords, the “harsh but still singing” tough-guy type of vocals used in the middle section of the song, and extra busy lead work that is assisted by the use of further colorful jazz-like chords.

These groovy riff with accenting dissonant or jazz-like chords are often intersected by blast-beat backed high speed, high-register lead riffs and that accounts for the bulk of this album's sound. But aside from the Gorod comparisons, there's the seemingly obligatory slow acoustic passages, piano intros, spooky or trippy guitar effects and everyone's favorite: pretentious lyrics. There's a taste of what are essentially thrash riffs with syncopated guitar rhythms in the style of Obscura, on tracks like Narcissistic Loop, Decline and Parricidal Ghosts.

The drumming is pretty spot on with lots of swing to go with these jazzy elements, accents galore to compliment the tireless rhythmic landscape and plenty of embellishment. The rhythm guitar would have a whole lot less impact without the drumming. That said, the riffs themselves come up short.

The riffs just don't connect with me. Like someone rambling in a lecture about some topic I thought I cared about but have since lost interest in. The essence of the idea flows from one section to the next well enough, but the riffs themselves by and large, just don't do it for me. Sure, “riffs” don't necessarily have to carry songs at this level of technicality – but there's just nothing standing up, smacking me in the face, and demanding I pay attention like Gorod, The Zenith Passage or Descravity would be able to do.

Tracks 3, 5, 6, and 7 all have intros. The 7th, A Name to Deny takes a laborious 1:20 to finally cut the bullshit and play some metal. Coincidentally, it moves on to one of the best, hard-hitting, busy-ass Beyond Creation/Obscura type riffs on the whole album. But still, you're not Chopin, and I did not put on a metal album to hear piano music. Don't misunderstand this as “it's soft so it's bad”. My classical collection is currently larger than my metal collection - I am just not impressed by such shenanigans. A minute and a half of synth strings and piano? It's not bad because it's soft, it's bad because it's bad. Only the very top echelon bands like Edge of Sanity can pull off extremely interesting non-metal passages on their metal albums, and you Fractal Universe, are not in that top echelon.

These types of contrived we're-progressive-so-listen-to-our-weird-piano-part passages seem to go hand-in-hand with the aforementioned pretentious lyrics and one other thing that strikes me about this album – fairly weak vocals. He's trying to sing, but still remain harsh, and ultimately fails at both. The tough guy singing shows up too often for my liking – traditional singing seems to make more sense – or better yet, in the interest of being “progressive” something a little more unique. The track Decline features some lower growls which just add to the vocal styles that aren't done exceedingly well here. They just have no bite. The vocals as a whole lack conviction.

This album is book smart. It knows what it's doing. It's not incompetent, but it doesn't "get it". It definitely lacks any kind of human touch. It lacks in passion, it lacks in anger, intensity or poignancy. It's not cute or unique; it's not surprising or clever. In other words, it owns the criticism that people normally have for this genre. And you could take a band I greatly enjoy like Soreption and on the surface you could say they're far more “mechanical” and “cold” than Fractal Universe, but Soreption makes me want to headbutt something till it dies, and this just doesn't. It doesn't even have to be emotionally powerful to make me wear the mean-muggin'-metal-murder face, but man, this just elicits nothing from me.

I struggle with how much to detract from this because of how much it borrows from Gorod. The second track sounds exactly like Gorod. Groovy riff for groovy riff, note for note. As close as two bands could possibly sound alike. I mean, when a band sounds like Iron Maiden, you can't take too much away from them, it's a huge, long-standing band that has influenced countless bands and their influence almost can't be escaped to the point where it's no longer considered some trademark sound – but Gorod is a super unique, fairly obscure band, and when you essentially steal their sound it's a lot harder to give you a pass. It's a lot more egregious.

Unfortunately, the highlight tracks are probably the same two tracks I mentioned as being the most like Gorod, which is a very bad look for this album. Parricidal Ghosts is one of the better tracks as well, the drumming really stands out here, it's extremely active, never settling for a straightforward beat and constantly accenting the guitars at every turn. If I could trim 2+ minutes of fat off A Name to Deny, it could be considered for a standout track.

Honestly, I could probably bump the score into the 70's if just not for all this boring, needless filler.

An engram is a biochemical change in the brain theorized to account for memories – and of this album, I doubt I will have many engrams. Too much flab, too much replicating a very unique band, and far too few quality riffs. Just enough fun grooves to keep it from abject mediocrity.