Since releasing, 'Empiricism, 'Norway's Borknagar have been on a steady but similar path for nearly ten years now. If you're new to Borknagar you'll find a fine mix of progressive tinged black metal with plenty of synths, great guitar riffs, quality drumming and growled and clean lead vocals performed by Vintersorg. However I'm sure you've heard Borknagar before so I'll just briefly examine this album.
After numerous listens I've found that, 'Universal' is indeed a decent album, though I find it lacks songs that truly stand out amongst each other. On the other hand its not as if any of the songs are bad, thus it becomes an album you can throw on and easily listen to from start to finish. Curiously I also thought Mr. V's clean vocals were odd sounding, almost as if there was some serious over producing of them in the studio. They don't sound bad of course, just different from the way he sounded on previous albums or in his own Vintersorg project. I should also mention the best song on the album, 'My Domain' features lead vocal work by former singer I.C.S. Vortex who left the band a decade ago to play bass in Dimmu Borgir. His vocals on this song are quite sublime and I find its the one track on the album that really keeps me coming back for more. Perhaps now that he's been dismissed from Dimmu he'll re-join Borknagar as backing vocalist.
Once again a solid effort if you've enjoyed the stuff Borknagar has been doing the past ten years, but if you're just casual fan or not into the progressive black metal thing then there's nothing that demands your immediate attention.
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