Location: Madrid
Country: Spain
Genre: Gothic metal, gothic rock
Full length: Collapse
Format: Digital
Label: Metal Hell Records (USA)
Release date: March 3, 2023
Universal Theory, a musical studio project formed in 2011, creates songs that blend goth, symphonic, melodic death, and doom metal in an ambient, melancholic, romantic, and passionate framework with dark passages and lyrics drawing from the experiences and thoughts of founding members Jesús Pinilla and María José Martos.
Listening to all their releases back to their 2013 debut "Mystery Timeline," the more I focused on their musicianship and mutual interplay as singers, the more I recognized them developing something with a personality all its own. I began to discover the music they create is more than the sum of its parts, resembling a dramatic metal opera with the influences and characteristics I mentioned previously.
Another distinguishing feature of the project is a tendency to incorporate different moods into their music, such as jazz and acoustic guitar-inspired song structures, if it helps to enhance the desired ambiance to convey to the listener. Those jazz and acoustic sections are very much an organic part of their music, and don’t appear to be incorporated for their own sake. Adding these elements heightens the dismal tone of their gothic and doomy motifs, making them even more poignant in the grand scheme of things and broadening the ever-changing gamut of emotions.
Without going overboard making too much of an effort, Universal Theory has a talent for juxtaposing the moods they bring to a song, increasing its melancholy aspects, making their otherworldly passages more exotic and enticing, greatly enhancing the classical parts of their songwriting, and heightening the sections meant to soar over the material.
Many of their transitions have a sense of surprise rather than clues of "now we'll include this influence, now that one" and an attempt to compare themselves to bands that shoehorn as much as they can into a song. Their mood shifts are frequently unexpected, demonstrating how comfortable the band is with crafting them rather than trying to force you to follow along.
From their debut to this album, Universal Theory has been breaking boundaries in underground music in all its forms, evolving spontaneously and without a sense of obligation to expand. –Dave Wolff
Lineup:
Jesús Pinilla: Vocals, instruments, programming
María José Martos: Vocals
Track list:
1. The Colour Of This Night I
2. Based On True Events
3. Distant Times
4. The Colour Of This Night II
5. Remember (You Are In My Heart)
6. Wickedness
7. Collapse
8. Hope
9. Everyone Of You
10. Permanent Regression
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