SPHERIC UNIVERSE EXPERIENCE — The New Eve (review)

SPHERIC UNIVERSE EXPERIENCE — The New Eve album cover

Album · 2012 · Progressive Metal

4.5/5 · 2012-08-31
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The New Eve is the fourth album by French progressive metal act Spheric Universe Experience. The album is released in September 2012. On The New Eve Spheric Universe Experience plays the kind of progressive metal that is more song based without excessively long drawn out instrumental breaks and is made most progressive due to the multi-faceted approach to creating their music, drawing on a number of styles both within and outside of the spectrum of metal music, but keeping it formed around the traditional concept of how to make a song.

That’s kind of what makes The New Eve a difficult album for me. The band clearly has no qualms about including just about anything in their music (nor should they as a progressive metal act), but this does mean that although on one hand they are including stuff I like, such as symphonic parts, or a bit of power metal style speed, on the other we also get some electronic keyboard parts, which take the album in a direction I’m sure many metalheads won’t be so keen on. It is therefore most certainly an album that requires the most open of minds to get the most out of it. There were definitely parts in the album that had my eyebrows raised during my initial listen. However given a couple more I began to appreciate the work that Spheric Universe Experience had crafted with The New Eve.

Indeed once given time to properly sink in The New Eve is actually quite the addictive album from Spheric Universe Experience. The musicianship is interesting and Franck Garcia provides a solid vocal for the lyrics which are not without their hooks. To my own surprise the electronic parts within the album work really well and really add to the variety to be found within the release, and it is an album that has plenty of variation between its nine tracks, so much so that the album’s close to fifty minute duration seems to pass by much faster than it actually is, and the album often leaves me wanting to play it again straight away after its conclusion. The band’s riffs are also very much top grade, so there is plenty to sink your teeth into on that front.

The New Eve is certainly not an album to be judged based off one listen (no album is really, but this especially so). It is probably not an album to be judged based off a second or even a third listen to be honest because with the amount of different influences Spheric Universe Experience have drawn on to create it means that most listeners will likely find a section or two that isn’t quite to their taste. Whether that means the electronic keyboards as with me (which I think are the most major of influences from outside what is the accepted norm for metal) or something else remains to be seen but I was surprised to find myself enjoying stuff I normally don’t in The New Eve.

What I like about the album most though is that it’s a progressive metal album that, although it uses mostly clean vocals (there are few growls in Self Abuse) and perhaps on paper could be grouped with the so called ‘vanilla’ or ‘traditional’ progressive metal acts, it just doesn’t fit my conception of such artists well enough that I’d consider the band to be of the same breed of progressive metal act. They are different in a good way, and they have most definitely made a fan out of me with The New Eve. An exceptional grade rating is easily deserved.

9.3/10

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven (http://metaltube.freeforums.org))