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Rating: Strange.
Strange.
Strange.
What other adjective could better define "Spheres," Pestilence's umpteenth effort? Oh, yes, here it is, it's not even too difficult, elaborate, or whatever: WONDERFUL.
Yes indeed, as you might have already guessed, we are faced with an album of enormous caliber, magnificent, complex, incredible in its thousand facets that surprise listen after listen.
Pestilence (if you don't know them, be ashamed, I tell you with all my heart... actually no, I just tell you, otherwise you'll spite me by giving this review a one uaz uaz) are one of those early 1990s prog-death bands (great times, I will always regret not having the fortune to live in Miami or Tampa in those days) that managed to create a new genre, also referred to as "death-jazz," capable of, through innovation, melody, inventiveness, and superhuman technique, stripping extreme metal (which at the time was still at bands like Morbid Angel, Sepultura, Slayer, and so on) of the prejudices of the good-thinking people who at that time saw and judged it as a "Genre for people with mental disturbances, smelly, drunkards, and Satanists."
Well, now let's tell the truth: but did Pestilence ever make a wrong move? An enviable career, made of education and culture, all elements transposed into their metal which, along with that of their "colleagues" Atheist, Cynic, and Death, was unanimously defined by metalheads as "heavy (P) metal," coupled with an extraordinary musical taste and a technical ability nothing short of enviable. A band that, without ever denying the past, managed to write the laws on which the music of the future would be based (in fact, you shitty numetal clowns, never listen to these people, huh?), however, meeting a ruinous, premature, and anything but deserved end.
You'll complain now, you'll say to me: "Ok, good propagandist, but we don't care about these guys, talk to us about the album," and I answer you: there's nothing to say about the album. A true cornerstone of metal in general. I'll just say that the four geniuses brought to life in this "Spheres" eleven sublime Tracks (with a capital T) destined to enter forcefully into the heads of the most cultured and refined metalheads.
The singer/guitarist Patrick Mameli (Mameli?!) offers an excellent performance, delighting with a vitriolic scream and competing in technique with the other guitarist, Patrick Ulerwijk, who offers infarction-inducing fusion inserts.
But it is certainly the rhythm section that amazes: a drummer, Marco Foddis, who creates impenetrable walls of sound but, when needed, sweet cymbal clangs that make the atmosphere even more hypnotic, and a bassist (bassist?! Better defined as "bass machine"), Jeroen Thesseling, undoubtedly jazz-trained, who with this CD confirms himself as one of the best metal bassists of the time (followed at short distance by a certain Tony Choy and another guy named Sean Malone): Steve Digiorgio can safely go to bed.
Guys, I don't know what to tell you, but more adjectives for the disco are coming to my mind.
Formidable.
Gritty.
Hypnotic.
Tracklist and Lyrics
01 Mind Reflections (03:21)
Unconscious, conscious
Your mind is trapped, your body is free
A senseless life in silence
Your eyes are closed, yet you see
Within your personal world you see
a realization of what could be my soul
or is it just my fantasy?
A timeless world unreal
Reach out for all you can not feel
Things you have seen
at places that you have never been
Invision what turns out to be
a part of life's history
Flashbacks of things to come
Past and future are on
Mind Reflections
Mind Reflections
Roam into the nowhere of pleasure
Behold through your inner eyes
Experiences of human nature
appear on the screen of imagination
Seen by the restless mind
The source of subconscious visions
04 Aurian Eyes (01:32)
[Performed by P. Mameli with the Roland midi guitar synthesizer]
["Dedicated to my lovely wife Kim"]
06 Personal Energy (04:08)
[music: Mameli]
[lyrics: Foddis]
The temple of the soul
Home of the spiritual source
Blessed with powers we unfold
Human magnetism, uncontrolled
Personal energy
The magic of nature
A presence of ourselves we cannot see
Personal energy
Consciousness, life towards the essence of eternity
A domain of harmony
Captured past and future
A vision of reality
Divided structures, the higher senses, polarity around all creatures,
Increasing possibilities of self-discovery,
Energetic thoughts creating electricity
[Lead guitar synth: Mameli]
[Lead: Uterwijk]
08 Spheres (03:29)
[music: Mameli, Uterwijk]
[lyrics: Foddis]
The Highest Intelligence as the explaining principal of existence
Visions and conclusions eager to reveal some kind of significance
Critical realism, an imperfect reality
Knowledge, a human construction of theories
Moving the limits of wisdom to edges of its disappearance
Explantions captured in schemes of time
Unfolded with human interference
The emptiness of ignorance in a darkened void of mystery
Unanswered questions to be solved by the presence of some de‹ty
Spheres!
[Lead: Uterwijk]
An endless galaxy of time zones, dimensions, preserve the astral secrecy
The unity of time and space, a human philosophy
A faithful reflection, an imperfect reality
Knowledge, a human construction of theories
Spheres!
[Lead guitar synth: Mameli]
10 Phileas (01:16)
[Performed by J.P. Thesseling]
[Discords performed on Leader 4-string. Bass lead on Lag Force 6-string bass Eventide 3000]
11 Demise of Time (03:40)
Within the bounds of begin and end
lies the evolution of all that lives
Repeating history is its time ahead
Technology seems so primitive
Different eras unknown to man
set standards we've tried to discover
Revealing purposes of future lives
explain the presence, past, the ever
Monuments misplaced in agelessness
They fill the void of what used to be
Lives beyond the ones we know
The mind's view on surreality
Days fade out the clock of existence
when dreams start to roam the nowhere
Birth of new beings in nature's creation
to die and evolve in a new sphere
Demise of time
Behold the vision of all dimensions
from the perspective of eternity
Decades meet before my eyes
surrounded by the edges of reality
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By dani92
Finally, a truly great album.
'Spheres' is all this, and much more. Discovering it will be a pleasure, loving it a duty.
