Review by Sonny for Pestilence - Spheres (1993)

Well that was... unexpected. I'm a big fan of Pestilence's first three albums, but I had never listened to this last album of their first iteration before this month's feature. I am aware that it is an album that has split the Pestilence fanbase and is less well-regarded than their previous releases. I can understand why that is and if I had been a Pestilence maniac at the time I would probably have agreed. Of course I am more open-minded these days and more understanding of bands wanting to try new directions rather than forever recycling the same old tropes. But even so, it genuinely took me by surprise and marks a major departure for the band as they tried to produce a unique record that may have taken death metal in a new direction.

Even the tracks that sound most like Pestilence's earlier works sound different, coming off more like metal-era Killing Joke than Morbid Angel with a hint of an industrial sound to them - and that is only the beginning of the departure! I believe the band cited a number of influences for Spheres, among them Bill Bruford and I would suggest Robert Fripp too as I can definitely hear a King Crimson influence on tracks like The Level of Perception and Soul Search. The album as a whole is more progressive and technical than you would ever expect from a band with Pestilence's previous output, being far more ambitious songwriting-wise than almost any other metal band of the time.

All this is even before we discuss the short pieces that mark the band's biggest departure from the norm. Aurian Eyes is a classical strings-led short piece of chamber music, Voices from Within sounds like a piece from Vangelis' Blade Runner soundtrack album and Phileas is a gentle guitar piece. In addition the four-minute track Personal Energy is a love song to seventies English prog and my personal favourite, the title track, is a sublime mix of death metal and space rock. I'm not sure that I have heard another album quite like Spheres and certainly not from the early nineties and you know what, the more I listen to it the more I get into it. Departure for Pestilence it may be, but a dip in quality? I think not.