Review Summary: A decent but unoriginal debut for universum
Universum is a Melodic Death Metal band from Adelaide, Australia. They released their debut album: Leto Destinatus in 2008, an album that many will surely love, and many will also hate.
Leto Destinatus plays a modern Melodic Death Metal, with also the use of keyboards, however it falls short on the ''originality'' department, having obvious influences from bands like: Dark Tranquillity, At The Gates and Disarmonia Mundi, the final product of Leto Destinatus will be an obvious: ''I've heard this before'' to any fan of the mentioned bands. The riffs have been used before, the keyboards dont add much, the vocals get very boring after a few tracks even with the addiction of clean vocals metalcore style. All in all, it seems the band was trying to combine diverse elements to create something original, but the album surely doesn't sound original at all.
The guitar work done here however is pretty good, their down-tuned adding a darker tone to the album (that the keyboards didn't), with a few very good solos. The bad production however takes away a bit of the bands capacity, felt like the drums were cast aside from the whole album, and a big zero in the bass department.
The songwritting also falls in the ''This sounds familiar'' situation, while the overall can be enjoyable, none of the songs will stand out as great, let alone any of them being spectacular. It's not just Universum, but this lack of creativity seems to haunt the new Melodic Death Metal bands altogether due to obvious reasons.
A very mediocre album, not a bad one by any means, but many metalheads (specially the fans of the bands mentioned above) will probably hate this release. But I'm sure there will be many people who will enjoy this album as well. Even 'tho many of them will find themselves skipping most of the tracks after 1 or 2 listens
pros:
-Good guitar work
-Good solos
-Guest solo from Tomy (Mors Principium Est)
cons:
-Repetitive
-Unoriginal
-Vocals are boring
-No bass
