Album Review: Scar Symmetry - The Singularity Phase II: Xenotaph

Conceptual albums are hard to get right, and when you try to stretch those ideas over more than one album, that task becomes nearly impossible. In the case of Scar Symmetry, we are getting the second chapter of this "Singularity Phase" a full nine years after the first chapter. This isn't as mind-bending as when Iced Earth switched singers in-between the two chapters of their "Something Wicked" set, but taking so much time between releases that are tied together is incredibly difficult. It worked for the "Avatar" movies, but only because people wanted to see if the biggest movie of all time could be followed up. It isn't quite the same thing for another Scar Symmetry album.

That is to say, I'm not even going to try to parse through the scientific language of these songs. If they are adding to the theme and story of the last record, it will be completely lost on me. I just don't happen to believe I should have to remember every detail about a record from nearly a decade ago to get the gist of something new right now. But that's me.

"Chrononautilus" flies out of the gates by delving into the band's mechanical death metal within seconds. The robotic precision of the band has always been impressive, albeit cold. They haven't lost any of that over the years, but I have found them to sometimes lose track of the balance after the original lineup shift. This song is an illustration of that, as it blends that hard-hitting death metal with some nice melodic sections... except the volumes aren't balanced out. The death metal is noticeably louder, and when the melodic hook comes in, the mix pushes the vocal down so it recedes at the exact moment the song should be building.

Scar Symmetry's thing has always been a commentary on technology, but I find myself being worn down by the inhuman perfection of their music. You can tell everything on the record is played in absolute lockstep with the grid, and as impressive as it is if they pulled that off without recording in one or two bar increments, it leaves the music devoid of anything I could call 'feeling'. The music has no groove, no swing, and really no personality either.

That carries over to the vocals, where the growls are well done, but obviously not conveying much in the way of emotional information. The clean vocals don't pick up the slack either, bot because of the mixing issue that runs throughout the album, but also because the delivery comes across rather flat. It doesn't sound to my ears like these songs had any meaning the singer was working hard to get across. They're notes he's singing because they're the notes, and the lack of passion contributes to the blankness the album lives within.

That's the danger in focusing on topics that are devoid of humanity. The music starts to mirror the message, and you're left with the metal equivalent of the whirring fan keeping the system from overheating. Scar Symmetry are incredibly impressive players, but what are they playing? In trying to make their music as plasticine and robotic as possible, they've turned themselves into a musical sex robot. There are people out there who own one, and enjoy using it, but they're never going to replace everything that a real person can be. I feel that way about Scar Symmetry's music. There is much to like, and much to be amazed by, but it's in that 'uncanny valley' where I hear it more as a digital replication of good music rather than as that music itself.

We are now living in the age of AI, which is exactly the sort of thing this band has been talking about in their songs all along. What is ironic is that they are, by their focus, exactly the sort of band AI could most easily replace.

All of that is just the long way of saying I'm sure this record is good, but that doesn't really matter when I'm given no reason to care about any of this.