'Metahuman' is Sverre Knut Johansen's sixth album on the Spotted Peccary label, and if you don't know who he is by now, you obviously aren't one for keeping up with modern symphonic electronic music. Inspired by Deepak Chopra's book by the same title, 'Metahuman' is the search for the best version of oneself, a posing of the question: what are we capable of without the conditional mind? Well, that's an interesting posit, and an esoteric query that may never be fully answered, and as much as SKJ tries to answer it musically on 'Metahuman,' it is doubtful that this musical inner-journey will shake any worlds, move any mountains, or even lift the haze of misconception from anyone's mind. A pleasant experience is assured, but Johansen's skill and experience sees to that in everything he does. Going out here on a limb though, 'Metahuman' promises more. And that's the problem.

I listened to this album several times before writing this review and generally came up with the same nagging thought...something's missing. Something is not happening here that should be, or not happening in the right way. Melodies are ultimately simplistic and forgettable. Drama is evoked but never satisfactorily resolved. Much times is spent in pluming the cosmic effluvia and some passages are downright unpleasant such as a good portion of the rhythmic aspects of "Fluctuations of Awareness."

Ståle Storløkken guests with his Haken Audio Continuum (a gizmo I've written about before) on the brief fist iteration of the title track and also elsewhere. It lends a woozy, ethereal ambience to a not particularly definitive or memorable theme. Followed by the longest track - "Human *Path of Destruction" which opens with some interesting atmospherics which are dispensed with in short order for arpeggiated strings over chordal backing, there is a sense of uplifting or rising, but instead of exploding into something (anything) we get another melody over the arpeggiation and percussion which can only be described as...subdued. What?? Really? After the spectacular percussion on 'Dreams Beyond' you're going to push the rhythmic force of this piece to the background? What a missed opportunity.

Thereafter, there is a lot of cosmic "meandering," which amounts to space synth noodling. I suppose you could call it experimental or atmospheric, and truth be told, it sounds like nice ear candy, but remember what I said much earlier on about promising more. Some of it reminded me of the less stimulating tracks by Tonto's Expanding Headband, and that's going pretty far back to the early history of melodic electronic space music. Yes, there is some nice sequencing elsewhere, and a number of pretty melodies, and Devid Helpling even helps out with guitar, synth and piano on the final track “Infinity Being,” but I was really expecting some sort of revelation. Unfortunately, none came to me. After the brilliant 'Dreams Beyond,' this is kind of a letdown.