Spheric Universe Experience - Unreal 4/5

01. White Willow 06:28 02. Down Memory Lane 03:58 03. Lakeside Park 05:36 04. 3rd Type 07:23 05. Near Death Experience 01:46 06. Lost Ghost 06:16 07. Dragged 06:04 08. O.B.E 03:59 09. Tomorrow 08:07

I’m going to have to make clear that right from the start I have something of a bone to pick with Spheric Universe Experience; any astrophysicist worth his salt knows the universe is saddle-shaped. Not spherical. If Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein are down with that, sorry, I’m not letting a French prog band sway me.

Anyway, if we can somehow pretend that wound isn’t fatal, we could move on to the music…”Unreal” is the third album from the Nice-based five-piece, and is every bit as slick, assured and polished as you’d expect from a band who have been honing their craft for a decade. Despite recruiting a new drummer, Christope Briande, since the recording of 2007’s ‘Anima’, they appear as tight and confident as ever.
The band list their greatest influences and Dream Theater and Symphony X, and this is immediately apparent on opening track ‘White Willow’, as guitarist Vince Benaim doing his best to channel John Petrucci and a range of weird keyboard effects are the order of the day. That said, the giants of prog-metal are by no means bad role models, and subsequent tracks show the band breaking out and doing more of their own thing, and doing it well.

And what S.U.E. do on “Unreal” is strike a balance between melody and sheer weirdness - an interesting duality, to say the least. If a song gets too bizarre and threatens to spiral out of control into a vortex of insane time signatures and layered keyboard noises, an epic melody manages to kick in and salvage things (see ‘Down Memory Lane’ for an example of that). And if a song strays too far in the opposite direction, melodic to the point of being bland, the band pull out something utterly fruity to rekindle your interest.

Keyboard player Fred Colombo takes much of the responsibility for this upon himself; Benaim, as good as he is, just isn’t John Petrucci, although our most extensive surveys have concluded that only a very small minority of people in fact are. There’s nothing wrong with his playing technically - his solo in ‘3rd Type’ is a belter, as is the breakdown in ‘Lost Ghost’ - there’s just a lot more emphasis on rhythm than lead from the guitars. Hence, Colombo takes on the majority of solo duties, as well as providing much of the variation in tone by attempting to use at one time or another each and every single setting on his synthesiser. He even breaks out the Grand Piano a couple of times, most notably for ‘Near Death Experience’, the album’s kind of intermission piece, and practically takes over altogether on O.B.E., which is really a solo piece with S.U.E. acting as Colombo’s backing band; the fact that they can pull this off speaks volumes both about his individual talent as a musician and the tightness of the band.
Vocalist Frank Garcia does his job convincingly enough, if a little predictably. He doesn’t really stretch far beyond the standard prog-rock warbling style, save for the odd multi-tracked harmony section, and towards the end of the album you get the feeling a little variation would be welcome, even if only to take some of the pressure off Fred Colombo. The same can be said of the tone of the guitar and bass; it’s much the same throughout, by no means bad, but with the threat of possibly becoming a little repetitive over 50-odd minutes of music.

Spheric Universe Experience come across as a band comfortable with the style they have adopted, and, strange as it seems for a progressive outfit, rarely stray from it. But hey, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it; “Unreal” is a good album, featuring songs infused with strong melody as well as an abundance of energy. The songwriting throughout the album is top-notch, and I reckon I find something new that I like about it every time I listen to it.

The moments when “Unreal” works the best are when the band finds that balance I was talking about earlier, between the melodic and the bizarre. ‘Down Memory Lane’ is a good example of this, featuring a jittery, sort of oriental-themed intro and verse before embarking on an anthemic chorus line. ‘Lost Ghost’ shows the band stretching their repertoire a little, swinging from pounding, riff-fests of rhythmic sections to a chorus which feels like something out of a power-ballad. And final track ‘Tomorrow’ closes things out in a style that really sums up the band; capable of lining up moments of elegant melody next to crunching riffs and frankly odd keyboard interludes, all somehow coming together into a coherent whole.

All in all, “Unreal” is a solid effort, and certainly serves to draw Spheric Universe Experience out from the shadow of their rather obvious influences. They manage to create some pretty impressive soundscapes, and I’d expect this album to propel them to a greater level of recognition. Even if I’m not buying their theories about the shape of the cosmos, I certainly won’t be applying the same rule to their albums; musically, you can definitely consider me a convert.

Unreal is available to buy or download at play.com

Genre : Progressive Metal

Article by Phil Sim