THE ULTIMATE MULTIVERSE

"The Ultimate Multiverse" is a compilation album by multi-national progressive metal act Chaos Over Cosmos. The album was released through Narcoleptica Productions in June 2020. The material on "The Ultimate Multiverse" is compiled from the EP's "Chaos Over Cosmos (2019)" and "II (2020)". Chaos Over Cosmos is a duo project consisting of Joshua Ratcliff (vocals) and Rafał Bowman (all instruments and programming), who live in Australia and Poland respectively. The two have never met in person, so all parts are recorded individually and then put together for the final release. The band released their debut album "The Unknown Voyage" in 2018.

Stylistically the music is melodic metal featuring elements from melodic death metal, metalcore, power metal and progressive metal. While there are a lot of differences between the two acts, I think an act like Into Eternity is a valid reference, at least to some point. The tracks on "The Ultimate Multiverse" sounds a bit like they were composed to be played and listened to in instrumental versions, and sometimes the vocals seem like an afterthought. The instrumental part of the music is very busy and especially the omnipresent fast melodic guitar runs and futuristic synths/keyboards dominate the soundscape. The programmed drums are decent, but not more than that, and it's another example of a release featuring programmed drums where a human drummer could have added so much more to the music. It all becomes a little too sterile, because of the programmed drum sound and stiff playing style.

There's nothing wrong with the musicianship though, and especially Bowman is an incredibly skilled composer and musician. He knows what he is doing and he is more than capable of playing the adventurous and technically challenging pieces he composes. If he could learn a little restraint and not play a million notes almost constantly throughtout he release, I'd say there is a chance that he could compose some extraordinay material in the future. The material on "The Ultimate Multiverse" is interesting, futuristic sounding, and overall of a good quality, but the vocal parts need to be better integrated and not sound like they were forced upon tracks which were originally composed to be played in instrumental versions. The vocals vary between growling, screaming, distorted with effects raw vocals, and clean vocals. None of the vocal styles are particularly original, but they get the job done and they are generally decent enough.

So upon conclusion "The Ultimate Multiverse" is a bit of a difficult album to rate and describe for that matter. It's eclectic and adventurous, and there are some very impressive technical playing here and some beautiful melodic parts, but there are also some sterile programmed drums, and vocals which feel a bit like an afterthought and which aren't particularly interesting, so there are both good and not so good features on the album, and a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating isn't all wrong.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives)