SCAR SYMMETRY — Holographic Universe (review)

SCAR SYMMETRY — Holographic Universe album cover

Album · 2008 · Melodic Death Metal

3.5/5 · 2012-01-17
Diogenes

Circa 2008, Scar Symmetry certainly had their fair share of up-and-coming weapons. Both jack-of-all-trades vocalist Christian Alvestam and lead guitarist Per Nilsson were getting quite a bit of hoopla for the band’s relatively quick rise to stardom, and rightfully so; the vocals and guitar work on Pitch Black Progress are what makes it pretty special as far as melodic death metal goes. So, why not take what made them pretty successful, and push it allll the way to the front to make them even MORE successful? A novel idea, my dear Swedes!

Sure enough, the vocals and lead guitar on 2008’s Holographic Universe are more prevalent than ever before: Alvestam’s ultra-clean vocals having all sorts of layers and freakish range about them and Nilsson’s frantic leads quickly garnering him several spots on unknown Youtube guitar channels (and if that isn’t fame, I don’t know what is!). Also thrown into the mix are various futuristic keyboard effects; while the band had dabbled in this area before, they hadn’t been used to this extent, working with the guitar to create spacey atmospheres amongst the squeaky clean production. Put all of this together into some Soilworky song structures, add a dose of science fiction-based lyrics, bake in the oven for 30 minutes, and out comes the album of the year, guaranteed!

…If only it were that simple. Yes, Scar Symmetry seemingly struck gold with their 3rd album, straying from their roots just far enough to carve a niche for themselves and making Nuclear Blast damn proud for milking the Gothenburg cow one last time. There isn’t much not to like here; Holographic Universe is catchy, it’s tight, it’s what was cool at the time, so what could possibly be making it fall short of its predecessor? Let’s investigate.

First, the songs. They’re all pretty good; “Morphogenesis” is your traditional strong opener with a sing-a-long chorus, “Quantumleaper” and “The Missing Coordinates” show how freakishly talented of a singer Alvestam is, and “Prism and Gate” just kicks all kinds of ass . The title track is 9 minutes, and makes good use of every one of them. If there was one knock on previous Scar Symmetry works, it was that there was too much filler (I don’t buy this, but meh); this is certainly not the case here. Put on any track of this clean and technical mix of death and power metal, and you’re bound to be impressed.

The issue is this: it gets stale. Fast. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why I can’t listen to this album all the way through. There are simply too many tracks; I could easily do without “The Three-Dimensional Shadow” because by that point, the growled verse/sung chorus formula just doesn’t sound interesting anymore. The polished sound might be appealing at first, and you could easily put Holographic Universe on shuffle and enjoy the hell out of it for 30 minutes or so. But after that, it just loses its luster, droning on and on without sustaining the impact it initially had. While Pitch Black Progress is even longer, it has that dirty edge that can hold the attention of a death metal fan much longer than something that’s clearly overproduced.

The ideas are good. The music is very good. The originality is there. There is no reason why Holographic Universe shouldn’t be Scar Symmetry’s best album, and yet…it isn’t. While I was as enthralled as the rest when I first heard it, the a)lack of heaviness and b)eventual repetitiveness left me wondering what happened to that album that I once couldn’t get enough of. If you’re new to Scar Symmetry, this is still a great place to start (if not the best) for its overall accessibility, but I can’t help but feel that it doesn’t show this talented group of musicians at their best.