Art by Shad Mouais
Style: Progressive death metal, technical death metal (mixed vocals))
Recommended for fans of: Obscura, Alkaloid, Black Dahlia Murder, Gorod
Country: France
Release date: 4 April, 2025
Watching real life character development before your eyes is always interesting. Artists rarely show their true forms right out of the gate; whatever insanely ambitious project they may have brewing might just not match their current level of talent. It takes years, maybe decades of honing that craft to see a vision like that through. The early works of George R.R Martin don’t even hold a candle to how efficiently his epic A Song of Ice and Fire series is written, nor do the pre-Dickinson Iron Maiden albums have anything on their legendary mid-80s discography run. Gorguts didn’t create their dissodeath empire in a day, and even the mighty Archspire shot out of the gate with a misstep.
Fractal Universe didn’t quite get the memo, and released Engram of Decline, which is to this day, a masterclass in tech-death riffing and song structure. Sure, it’s a bit bloated, and the vocals weren’t quite there yet, but it’s a record full of face-melting riffs, jazzy solos, and just the right amount of sax. The prog influences, breakneck tempo changes, and spacy ambiance cemented Fractal Universe as a band who quickly rose to power in the tech-death pantheon. Then, they dipped further into prog and further away from tech, and any worry I had of them losing identity quickly faded with releases two and three. Rhizomes of Insanity and The Impassable Horizon are somehow even better releases than the debut, showing a band who’ve matured far faster than most. Surely, on the Great Filters, fortune favors this band over the massive amount of tech-death bloat we’ve experienced in recent years?
The Great Filters starts strongly enough, with a signature spidery riff pattern before quickly changing to the clean vocals we’ve come to know and love on their last two releases. But, something’s off—almost immediately. Vince Wilquin’s cleans sound a touch whiny here, and continue to sound that way for the rest of the album. The powerful rasps and delicate, Morean-like (Alkaloid, Noneuclid) vocal patterns have been completely eschewed in favor of something nasal, and they’re not at all pleasant to listen to. The growls are secondary on the whole record, added beforehand to make the soaring, clean chorus on every song feel like it has some semblance of dynamics. There’s a blandness to this record that hasn’t been found on any of the band’s prior releases, complete with the same spacey clean guitar that needs to be used during the clean verses. Every song follows nearly the exact same formula, feeling like better pieces of other Fractal Universe songs shoved where they don’t belong.
Even the production sounds off, not in the typical, plastic-y way that tech-death normally does. The Great Filters tip-toes between sounding clinically clean and overwhelmingly compressed, with both the softer and heavier sections being lifeless and hollow as a result. There’s an oomph to The Impassable Horizon’s glassy, grunting, audible bass and incredible guitar tones, all while remaining crystal clear in the dynamics. The drums are mixed horribly here, with a nearly inaudible snare and nonexistent kicks meekly driving most of the songs. Not to mention the overuse of sax, which is the only instrument that seems to be mixed correctly. Vince Wilquin’s skills are nothing to scoff at, but having it showcased in almost every song for the sake of padding ruins the gimmick as early as ‘Causality’s Grip,’ and by the time the sax appears on ‘Specific Obsolescence’, I was rolling my eyes and experiencing what can only be described as aural pain from the oppressively generic solo that followed.
‘The Equation of Abundance’ sees the band dip into an almost ballad-like territory, and it reaffirms that The Great Filters’ songwriting is all over the place. Gone are the face-melting riffs and solos, instead replaced with generic, odd-timed chugs. Each song has the standard, massive chorus where the vocals are belted out and the chords are huge, but just like the rest of the record, they feel more like ticks off a playbook than the band actually experimenting with their songwriting chops. There isn’t an ounce of memorability on this record, yet I can still sing the amazing chorus of ‘Flashes of Potentialities’ from Rhizomes, because that record didn’t write the same song nine times.
I can’t be the slightest bit forgiving, because this isn’t some no-name band. This is a band that is near and dear to my heart, and I’ve just watched them miss the pool and dive headfirst into concrete. As I write this, the outro of ‘A New Cycle’ plays, offering a reprisal of the intro chugs and lead-line. Instead of feeling that my soul has ascended and my palette sated, I can only feel that I’ve looked upon something empty. This serves as a shining example of playing to a formula, and forgetting what made the band so outlandish and unusual in the first place. Instead of progressing, everything here is regressing, back to the very antithesis of what a genre like progressive death metal is all about. I guess regression is a type of character development too, right?
Recommended tracks: The Void Above
You may also like: Carnosus, Synaptic, Retromorphosis
Final verdict: 4/10
Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page
Label: M-Theory Audio – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website
Fractal Universe is:
– Vince Wilquin (vocals, guitar, saxiphone)
– Valentin Pelletier (bass)
– Clement Denys (drums)
– Yohan Dully (guitar)
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