Holographic Universe

Melodic death metal has some amazing potential that unfortunately goes wasted. In theory you combine the aggression and creativity of death metal with the melody of heavy metal. In reality...95% of bands under the melodic death metal umbrella are either Maiden worship with death growls (can be but not always a bad thing) or Eurovision music with loud guitars (pretty universally shit). It's a real shame that more bands aren't like Intestine Baalism or Arsis, but stuff like that doesn't really sell out Ozzfest. Meanwhile absolute Roadrunner-core shite like Arch Enemy continues to be one of the biggest names in metal. It's frustrating but it ultimately is what it is.

Holographic Universe at first listen seems just like Eurovision music with loud guitars. Those choruses are absolutely ginormous (it puts a lot of genuine pop music to shame), with the riffage barely resembling melodic death metal. It just seems like all a vehicle to carrying along those pop choruses. And it doesn't help that the opener and lead single "Morphogenesis" is exactly that: a paint-by-numbers radio metal song featuring riffing no more complex than standard chugging with an overly clean "everyone sing along" chorus repeated a thousand times that's only considered heavy because the band tunes down to drop fuck.

...So is it kinda weird that I still like this? Let's get this out of the way here: this is death metal in name only, and I recommend you don't view as death metal. Even for the wide genre umbrella that melodic death metal took on, this is definitely one of the lightest bands with the name sake. Luckily this can really safely be viewed as a pop metal album. After all, the song structures are all verse-chorus with the vocals as the main focus of every song. This doesn't mean that there isn't some solid riffage, the chorus of "Quantumleaper" has a very nice riff that ties the entire song together, but the focus is very much on the vocals of Christian Alvestam. Whether he's doing harshes or cleans, he's got a really nice voice that definitely adds to the accessibility level of this release.

I should probably stop damning this with faint praise, because this is actually pretty good. Scar Symmetry has a knack for song-crafting, and unlike 99% of their melodic metal comrades the choruses don't seem super disjointed from the rest of the song. And it's not just choruses, there's a lot of flashy guitar work at hand here too, moreso in the solos. The riffs are fairly basic but still manage to compliment the songs quite well. I already mentioned the "Quantumleaper" chorus riff, but other songs like "The Missing Coordinates" and "Prism and Gate" also have very nice riffage within the songs. It's not uber-heavy but it's all earworm material for sure that still manages to tie everything together. If you're for pure power metal aggression, look no further than "Trapezoid", even if its chorus falls slightly flat it manages to be one hell of an onslaught.

So far this is all standard fare, but when Scar Symmetry bring out their progressive chops, you get some genuine classics. The title track is probably the closest that the album gets to melodeath territories with pretty consistently harsh vocals and overall heavier riffage, with an extremely uplifting chorus that's probably one of the best on the album. The song structure here is also more experimental. And despite being 9 minutes long it doesn't feel stretched in any way, it all works cohesively as probably the album's best track. The Ghost Prototype duology splits its ideas across two tracks but still works wonderfully for it with nice riffage in both and the second part in particular being some of the most pleasantly melodic material of the album, extremely uplifting and poignant. This especially applies when you're listening to the album in full, it's this huge payoff that closes the entire album just about perfectly.

There are duds here. From either choruses falling flat ("Morphogenesis") or just not having enough good ideas ("Fear Catalyst", "The Third-Dimensional Shadow"), some songs in here just don't work, and especially when the music is as poppy as it is, it's easy to fuck it up. Thankfully Scar Symmetry are pretty good songcrafters on the whole so most of the material is at least ok. The material on the whole is a little samey but it's not anything to knock the album on.

The production...ugh. This is your standard Nuclear Blast metal production. Guitars run through a million distortion pedals to make it seem more heavy than it is, drums triggered + quantized to hell and back, vocals processed like a top 40 hit, bass tracks that might as well not exist, and most of all: the album is absolutely brickwalled. It's bad, as to be expected from Nuclear Blast. Combined with its almost hour long runtime, and this could be a genuinely tough listen just on production values alone. The length is a little on the long side but it's not offensively bad. It actually almost flies by when listening to it. Still some tracks could be cut but I've no reason to complain about it.

Holographic Universe shouldn't be good. It has all the hallmarks of a melodic "death" metal release that make me scoff at the album and lament at what potential the genre has wasted in the pursuit of chasing radio success. And despite pretty much everything going against this from the outset, Holographic Universe manages to be an enjoyable if somewhat frustrating listen. These songs are pretty good...but I think it could be better. I like the standard Scar Symmetry shtick, but I adore the more progressive songs on display here. It almost feels like the band is holding themselves back at times, and I think if they went full send into that progressive side that they show this could be a genuine classic. As it stands though, Holographic Universe is a really solid album with decent pop sensibilities that's fit to entertain and a prime entry-level album into the more extreme subgenres of metal.

Originally written for Rate Your Music. https://rateyourmusic.com/music-review/TheRomansLord/scar-symmetry/holographic-universe/168424772