Back to Times of Splendor

Disillusion's Back to Times of Splendor has been recommended to me on numerous occasions and I have finally found the time to give it a few spins during the pandemic.

I can partially understand why many people appreciate this album so much. The production is surprisingly great for a debut record and makes each instrument and vocal style shine. The songwriting is certainly creative and the band shows a lot of imagination. The occasional symphonic elements blend in elegantly for instance and never sound artificial. The record is surprisingly heavy for a progressive metal output with aggressive growls, chaotic rhythm section and loud guitar riffs. The musicianship is at times technically impressive. The cover artwork is beautiful and imaginative. The best song is the short, quiet and inspiring ''A Day by the Lake'' while the epic closer ''The Sleep of Restless Hours'' features a few inspiring guitar melodies and vocal harmonies despite its excessive length.

However, there are quite a few things I dislike about the album. The songwriting is quite stretched and many songs are much too long for their own good. They seem to go on forever with either unnecessarily repeated passages such as in ''And the Mirror Cracked'' or with odd breaks introducing changes in style as in ''Back to Times of Splendor''. Despite the extensive running time, many songs sound stressful to a point when it becomes nerve-firing. The final result makes me think of Symphony X's forced tough-sounding musicianship of recent years and System of a Down's at times twitching and itching genre shifts.

In the end, Disillusion's Back to Times of Splendor might be of interest if you like overloaded progressive extreme metal but someone who is looking for atmosphere, fluidity and melody can find much better outputs than this strangely overrated record.