Lost in Time: Spiral Architect – A Sceptic’s Universe

Style: progressive metal (clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Cynic, (early) Fates Warning, Dream Theater
Country: Norway
Release date: 18 January 2000

Harsh vocal-tolerant people get all the fun. If you love technical music (with vocals), you’d best be prepared to tolerate screams, growls, and gurgles if you want irreverent shredding through time signatures and solos. We all know Dream Theater can blaze through scales and like to have a good old fashioned wank during their extended solo sections, but there’s something about technical death metal that emphasizes the outright skill of a musician even more than Dream Theater who still try and write songs. But as for clean vocal albums that capture the same unbelievably and unabashedly technical performances of the heavier styles, there are few options. Some of the old school tech thrash might scratch the itch; we have Eternity’s End who are power metal but also literally half of Obscura; and we have some of the OGs, Spiral Architect, taking the excessive tendencies of early Psychotic Waltz, turning up the bass, and playing it all faster.

Obviously, the instrumentals here are in a league of their own. Steiner Gundersen’s guitar parts dance around the twelve notes like Ron Jarzombek in impossibly twisted fashion. Underneath him, the rhythm attack of Asgeir Mickelson on drums and Lars Norberg on bass are the clear stars of A Sceptic’s Universe. Mickelson leads the group through rapidly fluctuating time signatures with apparent ease—his mind is clearly part metronome, and the autonomy of his limbs is stunning. Of course, most people who know Spiral Architect fell in love with the band because of Norberg’s bass, playing blazing hot bass licks with a jazz fusion tone and endless plucking precision. He stuffs more notes into every phrase than the average tech death bassist does in a solo; it’s truly among the most impressive bass performances in the history of prog, and he’s unrelenting in his bass speed and intensity for the entire forty-four minutes. Thankfully, such a performance is pushed extremely far forward in the mix, allowing Norberg to be the main instrumentalist throughout. His ethereal jazz tone transcends prog like in the second half of  “Excessit” or the crazy rhythms he swings through at 1:15 in “Insect.”

The final performer, Øyvind Hægeland on vocals, is an excellent fit in the band—although his voice is certainly an acquired taste—making Spiral Architect so unique among contemporaries and scene progeny alike. Wailing and a bit unwieldy, Hægeland’s clean singing is charming, occasionally showing off extreme skill, as well (3:23 in “Insect”). Nostalgia-inducing, the clean vocal style here makes it clear this album is from a bygone era of progressive metal, the golden age of the 90s (despite A Sceptic’s Universe releasing in January of 2000). They don’t make ‘em like this anymore. 

While stupidly techy, Spiral Architect’s A Sceptic’s Universe is still overtly melodic at all times, the riffs catchy. So many of the sections on this album are simply iconic: the main riff of “Spinning” with its harmonizing, the start of “Excessit” with the first face-melting bass attack, the flamenco-y bits of “Insect,” and, most legendary of all, the start of “Cloud Constructor” whose riff is the first which comes to mind for many Spiral Architect fans (I polled the ones I know). Far too technical to be grasped immediately, the riffs sink in within a couple listens nonetheless as some of the most memorable I’ve ever heard compared to those with an equal lack of instrumental restraint. 

Lost in time they may be, but Spiral Architect were the solution for tech death-sans-growling as far as I’m concerned, and they’re absolutely essential for any fan of earlier progressive metal; you can’t have a good 90s/00s collection without Spiral Architect. Most of the members of the band went off to partake in Norway’s various black metal bands, but they created a timeless masterpiece of prog on Spiral Architect’s one and only studio album… but not all is lost! In 2021, the gang got back together under the Terra Odium moniker and wrote an album in the same style, so perhaps there is a bright future where the new generation of prog metal fans knows the majesty of Spiral Architect (and/or Terra Odium) and their tech prog once again!

Recommended tracks: Spinning, Excessit, Insect, Cloud Constructor
You may also like: Terra Odium, Psychotic Waltz (first two), Watchtower, Twisted into Form, Control Denied, Spastic Ink, Blotted Science, Exivious, Sieges Even, Zero Hour, Eternity’s End, Aghora

Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Sensory Records

Spiral Architect was:
– Lars Norberg (bass)
– Asgeir Mickelson (drums)
– Steiner Gundersen (guitars)
– Øyvind Hægeland (vocals)