ARTIFICIAL

At first I was a little disappointed with Unitopia's 3rd album because I felt it was too mellow, lacked the grandeur of its predecessor's epics, and its own epic, 12-minute Tesla, while consisted of many individually enjoyable parts, was too disjointed. But the album grew on me, I think it's high quality, a consistency we can expect from Unitopia.

The crossover prog label is very apt here. Basically, Unitopia play sophisticated pop rock with prog elements, deep baritone vocals, occasionally crunchy guitar and a pastoralist philosophy. After repeated listens, it grew on me that songs like Artificial World, Gone in a blink of an eye, Not human anymore have great variation between instrumental parts, verses, pre-choruses and choruses fully utilizing their five minutes. Great reward is a lush slow burner, maybe kinda typical, but saved by the deep vocals, and bonus track What kind of world is a great sing-along closer to listen while driving your car.