Band:	Fragment Soul
Album:	Galois Paradox
Style:	Progressive gothic metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	February 2024

01. Eternal Night In Death
02. All That I Despise
03. The Pain Ceased
04. A Faceless God
05. This Empty Dream

Recruiting a vocalist of the calibre of Heike Langhans as a session musician on your debut album is quite a coup; having to tackle album number 2 without her is an intriguing challenge.

Langhans, who traded vocals with the band’s former male singer Nick Argyriou across Axiom Of Choice, isn’t the only notable vocalist who has been involved with Fragment Soul thus far in their journey; Egan O’Rourke of Daylight Dies also guested on Axiom Of Choice, and Ambre Vourvahis performed for the band’s first live shows in 2022 before joining Xandria. However, on Galois Paradox, the group have two new and permanent voices guiding listeners across the album’s journey; Marc Durkee has replaced Argyriou, while Tamara Filipovic (who also goes by VILA, and may be familiar to anyone who has heard Ison’s Aurora) is the first permanent female lead singer the group have obtained. With new faces also on the keyboards and drums this time around, a much-revamped Fragment Soul launch into the unknown on album number two.

Calling it a full-length album is debatable, however; at 28 minutes in length, it joins recent releases such as Notochord’s Aegis, Chorosia’s Stray Dogs and Orations by House Of Atreus in rendering the line between EP and full-length album effectively meaningless, as what these records are classified as basically comes down to what the artist considers it to be. In the case of Galois Paradox, Fragment Soul categorize it as a full album, and it does feel like a complete package despite its abbreviated length, in no small part due to the ‘denouement’ feel of the beautifully sorrowful closing piano ballad, “This Empty Dream”.

Looking past the length, despite the line-up changes, this album mostly picks up where Axiom Of Choice left off. I would loosely describe Fragment Soul’s sound as progressive gothic metal; the debut was filed under Gothic Metal in the 2021 Metal Storm Awards, and there is still a gothic edge to much of this album, with 90s Anathema and post-Discouraged Ones Katatonia coming to mind in a number of places. However, the record’s sound is as much, if not more so, a part of the atmospheric modern progressive rock sound that was popularized in the early 2000s; Porcupine Tree are likely a marked influence on the record’s composition, along with the likes of Antimatter (In The Silence also feel pertinent as a point of reference). Throw a bit of doom into the equation, and Galois Paradox is an album drenched in gloomy atmosphere.

On the vocal front, Durkee is an adept replacement for Argyriou, with a sullenness within the ballpark of singers such as Jonas Renkse and Vincent Cavanagh, while the breathy, tender singing of Filipovic stands up ably against the strong past of the band’s previous singers. Durkee arguably has a more leading role on the record, but the most interesting vocal work on the album is either when the pair are harmonizing, or one is seamlessly replaced by another, such as in within the first couple of minutes of “The Pain Ceased”. Both singers work effectively within the melancholic soundscapes crafted by the instruments, whether it’s the Porcupine Tree/Damnation-era Opeth progginess on “Eternal Night In Death” or the stately gothic doom of “A Faceless God”.

As to how the record stacks up on a songwriting level, it’s a fundamentally pleasant listen; the group pace the lighter and (relatively) heavier moments nicely, and as the vocalists weave in and out of the picture, they really carry the listener along on the journey. When the band is in the groove, such as in the second half of “Eternal Night In Death” as a mantric chant by Filipovic is doubled up by some ethereal vocals while the instrumentation grows gradually heavier, the end result is quite enthralling. However, the album, inspired by French maths prodigy Évariste Galois, is intentionally written with a degree of abstractness to the song structuring, and there are admittedly moments when the flow of songs slightly lose their way; for example, right before the passage I just highlighted above, the first half of this same song winds its way towards an unresolved pause after failing to deliver any especially satisfying moments.

Still, on the whole, there’s more hits than misses with the writing, and the inherent pleasantness of Fragment Soul’s stock sound carries a good amount of appeal just on its own. This particular gothic strain of atmospheric prog is one that will feel familiar to fans of a number of major acts while not particularly replicating any one of them, and it should have quite broad appeal even with its complexity as a result of this.