FRACTAL Universe – The Great Filters

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6.5

• Band:
  Fractal Universe
• Duration: 00:45:33
• Available since: 04/04/2025
• Label:

• M-theory

Streaming not yet available

Blue, orange, green, red. The Fracter Universe palette came to its fourth sound tint and, after the excellent “The Impassable Horizon” of four years ago, the interest in the new chapter developed by the Nancy band was more than justified. Proponents of a technical death metal where the prog traits absolutely do not play a marginal role, leading the global proposal to range often and willingly in extra metal territories, sometimes even jazzistic, with the use of an instrument such as the sax to further delight the metal dish, with their third album the Fracter Universe had, as they say, blew the counter.
The green disc, remaining on the subject of colors, had in fact found the right balance between the colorful and sinuous prog openings and the angular heaviness of a Death Metal in which the Obscura brand initially resonated as an almost distinctive trait of the transalpine quartet. We deliberately put the reference to the German band to the past, as, precisely with “The Impassable Horizon”, the group led by the guitarist and singer Vincent Wilquin has been able to carve out his own singularity within the genre, silently silently silently silent, without however distorting his primary objective. This is why the present here “The Great Filters” presented itself with a questioning point in bold, and the consequent request for a qualitative confirmation. So what to say? Fracal Universe promoted again?
By tracing a precise demarcation line, we can divide the judgment on two distinct floors. If we have nothing to complain about the abilities of the individual interpreters, as the technical virtues expressed by Vincent, Valentin, Clement and Hugo (at his last appearance with the band; at the six ropes there is now Yohan Dully) stand out greatly in all nine new pieces, it is on the contents of the same that we raise some reserve.
The sudden harmonic changes, the assiduous, but not spasmodic research of the different arrangements, with that rate of catchyability capable of making the technically more difficult songs accessible, suddenly reduced to the new album, leaving only the second part of the disc a more sparkling and engaging vein, with “specific obsolescence” to drive the handful, not too wide to say the truth, Greater attention. The first Cinquina, in fact, remains as hanging on a thread, waiting for something to take the spring, with the clean voice of Vincent himself to clearly overlook those growl attacks that had so much charm had given to the previous release, reducing them to sudden and minimal presences. Delayed bursting fuse, traceable only in a few episodes, such as the already mentioned “Specific obsolescence”, the whirlwind “Dissecting the Real” or the final “A New Cycle”.
A sort of 'I would like but I cannot' almost inconceivable, given the scope of the previous full-length: that the Fracter Universe were not a predictable band was now a fact but, frankly, we would have expected a job more in line with the artistic direction exploded in the recent past instead of this commendable Death-Pog tear with a lot of pulled handbrake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcar-myxmq