Back to Times of Splendor

I'm not a very picky guy. Really, musicwise, it doesnt take much for an album to please me, but there are very few albums that I consider really great and an album that gets there has to be very, very good.
A very, very good album is for example, an album that stays in my daily playlist for more than half a year. An album that there is not a single day I didnt listen to it in the past six months. An album that on every listen you discover something new in one of the songs. Disillusion's debut album from 2004 fits in all of the above. I can hardly put into words how much I love this album.

The album starts with the song "...And The Mirror Cracked". Strong Meshuggah-style riffs and fast drumming from the first second, with some layered clear guitar that pops in and out at times. The singer, Vurtox, sings in a perfect combination of clean melodies and agressive growls. Sometime halfway through the song there's a slowdown with some acoustic guitars with the electrics every once in a while. The song starts to fade with some calm piano notes, and just when you think it's over the song's harsh opening enters again in some sort of a closure, ending the song the exact same way it started.

The second song is "Fall", one of the shortest songs in the album and one of the only two songs where Vurtox sings only in a clean way. Dont get me wrong, this is no ballad or soft song in any way – throughout the whole piece there're crushing heavily-distortioned riffs. This song ends with a dramatic stop right after the last chorous ends, which leaves the listener shocked with a craving for more.
The next song, "Alone I Stand In Fires", starts with a sample of a scared man's breathing, sort of an intro for the song. Through the first couple of minutes of the song Vurtox sings clean with some telephone-like effect applied on his voice, and then switches to his charismatic grunt for the deep, heart-touching, well written chorus. The riffs speed up a little along with some aggressive atmosphere that slows down a little right before the second chorus.

The title song, "Back To Times of Splendor", starts from the same note the last song ended, with a beautiful piano-violin combination soon joined by one of the best guitar riffs ever written. Every time that riff starts, I go fucking nuts… Everything about this riff is amazing, from the technicality to the perfect violin and distorted guitar contrast. After the intro part ends, Vurtox's growls starts accompanied by a note-imitating guitar riff. After a swift breakdown around the beginning of the fourth minute, the song starts to amass power as the tempo builds up to a very aggressive grind-ish segment at around the seventh minute that ends with sudden break of silence that's quickly filled in with bird squeaking and rain samples. The samples merge with a relaxing bass & acoustic line that keeps up for a couple of minutes until the aggressive riffs and fast drumming takes the lead until the end of the song. If there's one song I have to pick to be the ultimate metal song of all times, THIS IS THE ONE. Every single aspect of this piece is flawless. Perfectly written, perfectly composed and perfectly performed. Simply perfect.

The fifth song, "A Day By The Lake", was the song I considered to be the weakest in this album. Although it's not really a bad song, it felt like the essence of the song was unclear because of the long intro segment and sudden ending, but soon it grew on me and everything became crystal clear. While not being the most technical song, without really any memorable riffs or brilliant solos, it's still an amazing song that really achieves it's goal. Vurtox sings the amazing moving lyrics with perfect melody, with the acoustic guitars and bass lines in the background, really gives this song the sad, touching and thoughtful mood it aims for.

The last one is also the longest one, "The Sleep of Restless Hours" starts with an acoustic build-up riff that bursts into a fast and vim segment with some furious energies from Vurtox's harsh vocals, that keeps up until the catchy, beautifully written chorus. A few minutes later the aggressive riffs turn into a calm, soothing, acoustic accompanied part, that starts another chorus, this time Vurtox sings with everything he has, which creates one of the most amazing choruses I've ever heard. After that last chorus the song breaks again to complete silence (actually there's low volume sort of static sound but that's almost silent) that breaks progressively into a powerful, mighty, simply astounding 4-minute instrumental ending. The band really puts every bit of energy into this ending, so it really feels like the grand finale, not only of this specific song but of this entire album, which makes you crave for more.

Now I bet all of you already looked at the score and saw the perfect 100 score I gave this album. I was totally against the "Perfect Album" idea and I swore that I'll never give any album this score, but that was before I found Back To Times of Splendor. If I could, I'd give this album 120/100. Even 200/100 and much more. Every single moment of this album is filled with excellent musical performance. It has the most deep and meaningful lyrics I've ever seen, the most perfect balance I've ever heard. It magnificently combines elements and influences with such different branches of metal and music in general, creating one epic, splendid masterpiece. I'm soon going to be out of adjectives and I'm afraid I don’t know enough of them to describe how incredible this album is without doing a massive injustice with it. The only proper way for me to end this review is quoting "A Day By The Lake":

And I cry just as you
Knowing, this is coming to an end
But still I am hoping that fall will never come.
But it came.