Spheric Universe Experience - Unreal

It is said that if a bunch of monkeys were to be set at typewriters for millions of millions of years they would reproduce through sheer probability the works of Shakespeare (even a sonnet would do.) If another bunch of monkeys were set loose in a room with musical instruments the strains of Beethoven's Fifth or the opening riff of "Raining Blood" might eventually emerge (and the monkey responsible would be taken to another lab for testing.) But what of the other monkeys and all the noise they expulsed? Well, unfortunately I seem to have the CD they produced in my player and they call themselves Spheric Universe Experience. OK, I can't know if it's as bad as all that... but it is bad. I feel like the victim of all fevers and plague, listening to this.

Occasionally, one is assaulted by existential questions, the most common one, in popular theory, being, "Why are we here?" or its singular variant. This usually goes completely unanswered and its case is weakened by the possible, Pratchett style question-in-return, "Where else should we be?" For 49 minutes, the great question takes second place as all I can ask myself is, "Why am I listening to this?" and apart from the immediate cause of the CD being sent to me for review, the probable reason is that someone thought this was worth releasing with worldwide distribution (the even truer reason concerns the state of the world and mankind but let's not get me worked up.)

Supposedly, Unreal is a progressive metal album dealing with paranormal phenomena and has all the production values attributable to Dream Theater with more "spacey" sounding keyboards but the actual content contains many dissimilarities and therein lies the shock. Let's have a peek at "White Willow", the first track: half a minute in, the music begins and the guitar seems to be playing jump-da-fuck-up riffs with that Dream Theater tone. What's this, Dream Bizkit? The keyboard sounds like a bloody alien (and I don't mean an advanced, severely intelligent, well past the nuclear self-destruction threshold life-form either - this is a loser magpie ghetto alien that chatters incessantly) which might suit the paranormal theme but this shouldn't be the effect anyone tries to achieve. Not so much an out of body as an annoying you out of your mind experience. Do take a look at the first verse:

In this dark, mystical night
She was driving on this road
She and the car began to fight
She died all alone in the cold

Maybe they get better but damned if I know. It took me three listens across three days to get past the first song, and the bullshit continues. Actually, that's a great title for the album: The Bullshit Continues. The guitarist continues playing jump-da-fuck-up riffs and is gleefully assisted in his unclear mission by the drummer. It's like two people holding hands, looking deep into each other's eyes, smiling blissfully... and sinking into a pool of shit. Whatever half-decent sections appear momentarily on the album they are thoroughly well and truly negated by this propensity to jump-da-fuck-up. Unreal is one of the albums where I want to forget the music I'm reviewing and heap insults on the musicians. Well, the singer is decent, almost. He could be much better if the vocal patterns and music he has to sing to would let him. There is one song ("3rd Type") though, where he sounds like the offspring of Klaus Meine and an emo chicken.

The funny thing is, these are all proficient musicians who would serve admirably as sessions musicians under someone else's direction or supervision, they may have an inkling as to what constitutes song construction even, but for fuck's sake do not let them into a studio together. Failure to comply will result in anal rape by the last blue whale. And maybe a ghost and an alien too. Unreal? Hell, yes. Avoid this tripe at all costs.

July 23, 2010

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