"While "Anomalous Material" and "The Dreamer's Paradox" were easily classifiable as progressive metal along the lines of "Fates Warning, "Universica" is more genre defiant.
There certainly are metal elements on this album, including riffage that is akin to some of the more technical stuff on Fates Warning's "A Pleasant Shade of Grey", but there are also a lot of acoustic guitar parts and quite a lot of industrial elements, ambience effects, and elements from electronica.
The compositions are dynamic and the song structures are comples and interesting, and the music is on the whole very pleasant to listen to, albeit a bit less accessible and generally darker than the predecessor albums.
Recommended to fans of progressive rock and industrial rock as well as more adventurous progressive metal fans.
(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"
"JT Bruce's debut album "Anomalous Material" was good; his second album "The Dreamer's Paradox", I think, is better.
The style is still progressive, yet accessible, progressive metal in the vein of mid-to-late 90s Fates Warning; and JT Bruce's material still consists of instrumentals. The difference between the two albums is that, "The Dreamer's Paradox" is slightly more complex and a also more adventurous. There are a couple of more unusual time signature sections and also some more off beat 4/4 parts, which works very well. I think that the compositions are also more dynamic and even more interesting on this album - and a reason could, of course, be that they are longer.
I think that most tracks on this album should appeal to fans of the likes of Fates Warning and, perhaps, Queensrÿche - maybe with the exception of the closer "Hypnic Jerk" which is basically an avant-garde chaotic soundscape mash-up sort of thing.
Recommended to fans of Fates Warning, progressive metal and instrumental metal/rock.
(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"
"JT Bruce's debut album, "Anomalous Material" is actually quite good. It is a collection of well composed progressive metal instrumentals. What I like about the music on this album is that, while it is progressive metal, it is not overly technical or extremely technical, but rather it is quite accessible, and JT Bruce primarily makes use of 4/4 meters and and pentatonic scales, blues scales, and minor scales. Thus his compositions are quite accessible, even those who do not get prog rock or prog metal. Still, we are dealing with progressive metal here. The song structures are not straightforward but they are dynamic, and the overall approach is basically arty.
I would say that the music on this album has the same degree of progressiveness as Fates Warning's music had in the mid-to-late nineties. Very good stuff indeed.
Recommended to fans of progressive metal and instrumental metal/rock.
(Review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"
