Engram of Decline

The first thing one might see from this album is the album cover - a prettied up album that looks nice on a shelf, but is probably chock-full of technical wankery that is not worth anyone's time.  Everyone knows at least one technical death metal album that's just a pretty album cover.  However, that is not the case for this album.  Enveloping progressive metal and jazz with technical wizardry, Fractal Universe undermine pretty much every technical death metal release of 2017.

The album starts out with a very shreddy song, something that I had to take time to get used to.  I wasn't a huge fan of the first track upon my first few listens, but it grew on me.  I started to appreciate the shredding riff that dances on the border of wankery and an actual riff.  There are pretty much two major themes on this album: atmosphere/dissonance with and groove.  I enjoy the groovier sections of the album that make up track two and the last four.  The atmosphere is dispersed throughout the album, but is primarily focused within tracks three to six.

When it  comes to groove, Fractal Universe are all over the fretboard.  A perfect example is "Sons of Ignorance."  The main riff is a very groovy riff that sounds like Soreption if they didn't have so many gaps in their riffs.  It is very jumpy and the drummer compliments the tone nicely with rolling fills and almost Archspire-like precision.  The atmosphere is mostly made up of arpeggios and chords, with occasional acoustic guitar and clean vocals.  No matter what mood the music portrays, the guitar solos always shred.  No, really, these guitar solos are melodic and emotional, fitting the music perfectly.  One example of this is "Venomous Coils of a Holy Fallacy."  Another is "Sons of Ignorance" when the main, groovy riff is played underneath a soaring guitar solo, making a perfect rhythm.

The instrumentation on here is truly relentless and fast, combining jazz and technical death metal into one, concise genre.  A lot of bands that try this usually aren't successful, making Fractal Universe stand out as one of them that can pull this off.  Especially when they introduce the saxophone in track six.  The saxophone makes two appearances, once in track six and another in track 10.  Both times are solos and they come out of nowhere, catching the listener by surprise.  It is also nice to have this on only two tracks that are well spread out on the album.  This adds character and makes it more special to these two tracks.

Production-wise, this album is pretty flawless.  Because of its technicality, this album pretty much requires good production.  The bass is audible, and nothing interferes with anything else.  The vocals are a soft growl quite like Paul Masvidal of Cynic or maybe Chuck Schuldiner, but they aren't overpowered by the guitars even when they are grooving along the lower notes.

Long story short, this album is pretty much a modern day masterpiece.  It isn't super original, but, in a way, it is.  It takes from a variety of different acts and puts them all together into one, epic progressive technical death metal juggernaut.  The groove and the atmosphere all mix perfectly together to make a Soreption-meets-Gorod type of band featuring Nicola Gruhn of Virvum on lead guitar.  Every track has a flow that it sticks with throughout the entire track.

This album is perfect.  The riffs are impeccable, the flow is omnipresent, the production compliments the technicality, the vocalist has a perfect growl that isn't too low or too raspy, and the music is interesting enough for its hour-long runtime to not be an issue.  This is the epitome of modern progressive technical death metal because of how it captures emotions while maintaining chaos and will, to me, forever remain a classic.

Overall Rating: 100%

Originally written for themetalvoid.wordpress.com