Review Summary: A decent, undemanding slice of Swedish metal
Whereas most of Scar Symmetry’s Swedish contemporaries use occasional, wondrous licks of the guitar to create the melody, At the Gates and In Flames springing straight to mind, this (then) 5 piece from the lands of Avesta in Dalarna County relied instead upon the incredibly versatile Christian Alvestam. While the guitars were crunching away in the background with catchy chords, he would be singing, almost operatically, growling and grunting his way through some great tracks. Scar Symmetry finally hit the right notes for the mass market with their 2006 effort, “Pitch Black Progress” and “Holographic Universe” continues much along the same formula, albeit a more refined, even more mainstream approach.
Essentially, if you take the predecessor, add more bite to the guitars, and adapt a more heavy approach, you wind up with “Holographic Universe”. The single off the album was “Morphogenesis”, and what a song it is. Opening with some harmonizing synth sounds, it comes to life with a great, deep growl from Alvestam and a nice, groovy guitar section. Admittedly, the chorus here is nothing you haven’t heard before, but the best part of the song is the frantic breakdown, leading into a nice, simple solo from Per Nilsson that fits the song perfectly. And so the album continues. Nothing on here will really make you sit up and think “WOW, that was incredible!” but the overall package presented is more than a decent listen.
Instrument wise, the album is for the most part a stellar performance, although some songs really are a snooze fest. The worst offender here is probably Timewave Zero, which certainly starts out promisingly, with some nice riffing, but it hardly steps up in intensity until two-thirds of the way through, and by then I had already lost interest. The other song, though not quite as bad is the incredibly pedestrian “Artificial Sun Projection”. It just plods along at a steady, dull pace and the growls seem tacked on at the end of every flippin’ verse line, which makes it a rather annoying listen. Thankfully, this is about it as far as major complaints go, for every other song on here is a good listen, doing nothing but what Scar Symmetry do best.
For all out intensity, you really cannot go wrong with the title track, also the longest on the record by some three minutes. It may contain the usual trick of clean choruses, but it has the greatest proportion of growling on it in the entire album. The verses are swept along at a nice pace by the usual, Meshuggah-esque guitars, and underrated drummer Henrik Ohlsson gives yet another stellar performance behind his kit, churning out the occasional blast-beat. The distorted keys at 8.06 also add a bit more intrigue into the song, which is a nice touch.
As you may have noticed by the album name and the track titles, this is classic Scar Symmetry lyrical content; futuristic, utopian and (admittedly) slightly cheesy all spring to mind when you decipher what they actually mean. They are admittedly interesting due to their subject matter, but at the end of the day the instrumentation and vocal pitching will grab you attention the most here, not the actually lyrical content. Par example:
“This is year zero, all we knew has died
The mutiny came so sudden, killing yesterday
...whatever dreams were reaching to claim
Decides the path we are taking”
Hardly Shakespeare, but they actually carry a message behind them, even if it is the usual pessimistic slant.
“Holographic Universe” is not Scar Symmetry’s best release. Nor is it their worst. What they have created however a nice, easy listening metal album that contains some fist-raising riffs and one or two new ideas along the way. With some real stand-out moments (Holographic Universe, Morphogenesis and Quantumleaper, to name but a few) managing to raise the album from some dreadful lows, it is certainly an album worth your time, but not worth much else
Recommended Tracks:
1. Morphogenesis
2. Quantumleaper
3. Fear Catalyst
4. Ghost Prototype I- Measurement of thought
5. Holographic Universe
