Review Summary: Future Bites is a rather controversial album, which I liked a lot. Steve Wilson showed that he can experiment in a completely new genre for him and succeed in it.
Steven Wilson such a controversial figure and every new album causes debates within listeners, this album was not an exception. "The future bites" is quite different from Steven's previous works. The main difference is of course sound. In this album Steven is using more artificial instruments and emulators, than in any other album. Also the song structure is different, we are used to hear complicated harmonizing and crafty arrangements from Steven, but here songs more or less are straight forward - verse/chorus structure, which is too simple for the most "proghead" taste.
As for me I really liked this album. Steven tried to experiment in pop genre and in my opinion did great. He chose a rather relevant topic "modern society" and it problems and since nowadays we practicly live in virtual world he also used artificial musical tools to deliver the message. For me this album has everything that a good storyteller needs nice intro which immerses you in the vibe of an album and gives you the idea what it will be about, nice simple acoustic pop song, with a catchy chorus. It is a kind a song which can be easily accepted on any radio not only rock and can work well to broad the audience and. The plottbinding "personal Shopper" which for me is attempting to describe modern consumer mentality and an ountro, which puts finished touches on the work.
Album is interesting and can be appreciated by people, who have not heard about Steven Wilson before, so it can work as a nice promotion to new listeners. It creates certain atmosphere and all the tracks support it. I really enjoyed it and my ranking is 3,5 this album is good, and worth the listen, the only reason to not give it a higher rating is the lack of "wow" effect, which I usually get from his albums. But still decent work that did not disappoint
