Review: Ubiquity – The Ascendant Travels Among the Stars – The Progressive Subway

Style: Progressive metal, death metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: old Opeth, In Mourning
Country: Belgium
Release date: 15 September 2024

Cast your mind back about seventeen months. Omnerod dropped The Amensal Rise and 2023 was made. The unhinged Devin Townsend-esque death metal of these determined progsters went on to become my album of the year and made our overall site top ten of the year. Ubiquity is a project founded by Anthony Deneyer (harsh vocals and live guitars in Omnerod) back in 2015, in which he takes the lead, providing harsh and clean vocals as well as guitars and keyboards. Romain Jeuniaux (lead vocals and guitar for Omnerod) takes up bass duties, while Pablo Schwilden Diaz stays on drums for both projects, and a new face, Jérôme Blondiaux, the other founding member of Ubiquity, also provides guitars. Seven years on from their only EP, Towards Oblivion, comes debut full-length The Ascendant Travels Among the Stars on which Deneyer romantically reimagines the life of infamous serial killer Jack the Ripper in the Opethian style. Can lightning strike twice for the Omnerod boys?

Deneyer’s roar certainly passes the Akerfeldt test in its throaty power, and the timbre of his cleans has shades of Akerfeldt, Chris Hathcock (The Reticent), and even a little bit of the lower register of his bandmate, Jeuniaux. Ubiquity’s bite, however, is in those leviathanic harshes, and the overall vibe is a strange marriage of Blackwater Park/Ghost Reveries era Opeth to the dense, intense and angular contemporary approach of Omnerod, with those same bursts of theatricality, waltzing riffs and moments of unhinged heaviness. The mellower parts in particular often eschew acoustic guitars in favour of a marimba effect, speaking again to that Omnerodian quirkiness.

Indeed, the inherent theatricality of their parent project sneaks its way in often; particularly on the intro to “Endless Depths” which has a somewhat carnivalesque swing before erupting into a classic Akerfeldtian gallop, or on the waltzing verses of “Tree of Pain”. Despite the Opethian foundation, the guitar sound feels thicker and the organ is almost always bleating away to bolster the instrumental section; the effect is akin to a wall-of-sound, which speaks to the Townsendian elements underpinning Omnerod once again leaking through. Even in the clean sections that oppressive atmosphere from The Amensal Rise looms large; it’s almost as if Deneyer has made the album Opeth might have made had they only formed around 2020, transformed by the evolution of the progressive metal scene up to now. 

The Ascendant Travels Among the Stars is replete with standout moments, including a showcase of Jeuniaux’s bass work on “Red Moon”, more overtly Opethian galloping riffs and bluesy soloing on “The Traveler”, and a wealth of off-kilter organ on “In a Blink” which journeys into strange clean guitar licks over a quasi-funk rhythm. The loftiest star on The Ascendant, however, is “Endless Depths”, the main riff of which is probably the sickest groove I’ve heard all year; Diaz delights in abusing the ride cymbals with some sick accenting while the whole band gallop away with the riff, transforming it with little embellishments, even going so far as to veer it into a half-time metalcore breakdown which transitions so seamlessly back into the rhythm again that I couldn’t help but laugh at the audacity of it.

Lyrically, Deneyer finds an interesting way into the Jack the Ripper story, portraying the infamously mysterious killer as something of an alien, at best a human with faulty wiring acting on a growing animalistic urge to kill in the hopes of finding meaning in the act, and at worst a sort of void, an aberration with an incomprehensible psychology. The name gives it away, but death metal has an abiding curiosity with death and murder in all its permutations, sometimes plumbing rather grotesque extremes, but Deneyer’s take is thoughtful and eloquently stated, ultimately concluding, “And in the end, only a pit shall remain/A vortex in which hatred should be thrown”. Evil lingers, but its vessels wither and die.

My one critique in my review of The Amensal Rise was about production which occasionally washed out vocals and left the drums feeling a little disconnected from the rest of the band. No such issues arise during The Ascendant Travels Among the Stars; Deneyer’s mix judiciously balances all the instruments, while Tony Lindgren’s mastering (incidentally, Fascination Street also produced Opeth’s Ghost Reveries and Watershed) gives the requisite polish. It goes to show how these musicians are still developing and refining their sound, making leaps forward with each new release. 

Lightning certainly can strike twice, and Ubiquity manage the difficult balance of being a clearly Opeth-inspired band while not merely copying them, infusing that sound with their own trademark quirks, all of which makes The Ascendant Travels Among the Stars a pretty mammoth album in its own right. Unfortunately, the band announced that the release of the work coincides with the dissolution of the project—they are ubiquitous no more. Nevertheless, while not quite reaching the giddy highs of The Amensal Rise, this is another feather to the caps of these musicians who are proving to be some of the most exciting composers in the modern progressive death metal scene, and Deneyer can be proud of having brought his longtime project to rather glorious fruition.

Recommended tracks: Endless Depths, Red Moon, The Traveler
You may also like: Omnerod, Wills Dissolve, Piah Mater
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | YouTube | Metal-Archives page

Label: Independent

Ubiquity is:
– Anthony Deneyer (vocals, guitars, keyboards)
– Jérôme Blondiaux (guitars)
– Romain Jeuniaux (bass)
– Pablo Schwilden Diaz (drums)

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