STILL IN THE SPHERE

"Still in the Sphere" is an EP release by French death/progressive metal act Supuration. The EP was released through French label Reincarnate in 1994. Supuration have existed under a couple of different monickers since 1987 but settled on Supuration in 1990 and released a couple of minor releases in the early 90s before releasing their 1993 debut full-length studio album "The Cube". After releasing "The Cube" Supuration recorded and released a 1994 soundtrack demo (only available through the Supuration fanclub) for the French film "Jacques le Fataliste", but they also worked on the music featured on "Still in the Sphere".

"Still in the Sphere" features five tracks and a total playing time of 27:39 minutes. So it´s a mini-album length release rather than an EP length release. Four tracks are new originals which are exclusive to this release and the closing track is a cover of "Shout" by Tears For Fears. Supuration already turned things on their head on "The Cube", where they produced a pretty unique sounding progressive death metal album, and naturally they continue that trend on "Still in the Sphere". The death metal elements have been scaled back a bit, although lead vocalist/guitarist Ludovic Loez still performs death metal growls. He also sings a lot of clean vocal parts too though, so the two vocal styles are pretty evenly distributed on this release.

The songwriting is quite intriguing and Supuration continue to come up with interesting and unconventional ideas. Not everything works wonders and the relatively weak sounding production job isn´t a positive either. But "Still in the Sphere" is still overall a quality release from a very unique act, which Supuration can be proud of. It´s a varied and dynamic release featuring a subdued death metal element, and otherwise leans more towards progressive metal. Not progressive metal like Dream Theater or Fates Warning, but more just an unconventional type of metal. The original material is of a good quality and the odd futuristic sounding doom/death metal cover of "Shout" is actually pretty great too. It´s definitely not a one to one interpretation of the original song and Supuration deserve praise for that. A 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating is warranted.

(Originally posted on Metal Music Archives).