Pestilence
Spheres

THE REVIEW

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.