Fractal Universe - Boundaries of Reality

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When most people think about Extreme Metal, they don't naturally think of France. With the exception of a few well known acts, such as GOJIRA and ALCEST, not a lot of attention is paid to the French Metal scene outside of the borders of France. Despite this, there are a lot of great bands that go overlooked. Nancy based Technical Death Metallers FRACTAL UNIVERSE are one such band. After forming nearly three years ago, the band are finally on the verge of releasing their debut release, the "Boundaries of Reality" EP. These four tracks give a pretty clear picture of the sort of sound the band are trying to capture.

The first track on this release is "Mourning the Loss of a Dim Glance", a song which is pretty good. It opens with an orchestral piece that suitably gets you ready and sets the tone for the music that's about to come. And when the Metal side of the music comes, it's very good; it has all of the technical flourishes to it that you'd expect, but this isn't done in a way that is showing off. The music all fits together and works really well. "Tears of Misanthropy" continues down the progressive route, but has a distinctive groove to it musically, which works really well on this track. Again, it flows very well, and doesn't apply any more technicality to the music than is actually necessary. The EP's title track is another really solid, great track; the blisteringly fast and technical opener grabs your attention as soon as it comes out of the speakers. It's incredibly technical, but also has a ton of hooks in it which work very well. And then we come to the final track, "Starless Aether", which opens on a very dissonant, eerie riff, eventually building up as the track goes on. It ends up being much faster and more aggressive than it was initially, and ends up being one of the best songs on the record.

This is a great debut from a band that's already showing plenty of promise. They are technical, but don't utilise their musical talents unnecessarily, resulting in some genuinely interesting hooks. If you enjoy the more technical and progressive side of Death Metal, this is well worth checking out.