Time Signature
Sol...
Genre: progressive rock/metal/electronica
While "Anomalous Material" and "The Dreamer's Paradox" were easily classifiable as progressive metal along the lines of "Fates Warning, "Universica" is more genre defiant.
There certainly are metal elements on this album, including riffage that is akin to some of the more technical stuff on Fates Warning's "A Pleasant Shade of Grey", but there are also a lot of acoustic guitar parts and quite a lot of industrial elements, ambience effects, and elements from electronica.
The compositions are dynamic and the song structures are comples and interesting, and the music is on the whole very pleasant to listen to, albeit a bit less accessible and generally darker than the predecessor albums.
As a piece of progressive music, this is worth four and a hald stars, but on a metal-oriented site, I think that I will have to give it three stars because of its lack of "metalness" compared to the genre of progressive metal as a whole and compared to JT Bruce's previous releases.
Recommended to fans of progressive rock and industrial rock as well as more adventurous progressive metal fans.