Scar Symmetry - Ghost Prototype II – Deus Ex Machina

Bands change their line up all the time.  It's only natural that if you lock a group of creatives in a room, tour bus or cupboard for an extended period of time, they might produce some magic, but there will almost always be tension and so inevitably people will quit or be fired.  And if that person walking out of the door happens to be your vocalist or one of your primary songwriters, you risk losing the essence of your band with them.  Hell, heated arguments still rage today about whether Sammy Hagar saved or killed Van Halen, and you'll still find people fighting the corner for the Blaze Bayley era of Maiden.

And that's what fans feared with the group behind our pick this week, Scar Symmetry. After forming in 2004, the swedish melodeath act was arguably just hitting their stride in 2008 when after 3 really solid albums, they parted ways with their vocalist, Christian Älvestam.  Was this the end?  These were big shoes to fill, he had an impressive range in both growls and clean vocals.  New vocalists were announced the following month with Roberth Karlsson tackling the growls and Lars Palmqvist handling the cleans.  Touring looked promising and new music was in the works.  And then their fourth album, Dark Matter Dimensions landed and it was immediately clear that this band had bucked the trend.

We're now 7 albums in, with their most recent offering, The Singularity (Phase II – Xenotaph), part of a planned trilogy of albums landing about a year ago and if you're into the more epic side of melodic death metal, in this humble writer's opinion, Scar Symmetry definitely still continues to scratch the itch.

Anyway, after all of that gushing about it, it would obviously make sense to pick a track from the aforementioned Dark Matter Dimensions album, right?  Yep, well we like to keep you on your toes here at Rock Song of the Week, so I'm going to throw out a curveball with a track from the album before it, the last one to feature their old vocalist and your homework is to check out the newer stuff yourself.  So without further pomp and circumstance, here's our pick this week - Ghost Prototype II – Deus Ex Machina taken from the 2008 album Holographic Universe.  Enjoy!