DISILLUSION

Gloria

Metal Blade
rating icon 4 / 10

Track listing:

01. The Black Sea
02. Dread It
03. Don't Go Any Further
04. Avalanche
05. Gloria
06. Aerophobic
07. The Hole We Are In
08. Save the Past
09. Lava
10. Too Many Broken Cease Fires
11. Untiefen


It's been a while since we've been given a front-row seat as a band self-destructs this spectacularly. MORGOTH going from bleak death metal to KILLING JOKE in the mid-1990s… the "black metal to weird industrial" metamorphosis of bands like MAYHEM and COVENANT a few years later… and of course, looming over all failed career experiments like a monument to sheer bad taste and planning, CELTIC FROST's "Cold Lake" debacle.

Add Germany's DISILLUSION to the list, because the general opinion of their sophomore effort, "Gloria", seems to be somewhere between stunned disbelief and flat-out anger. Their debut album, "Back to Times of Splendor", was a masterful and impressive mix of death, black, thrash and progressive metal into a sound that was creative, passionate and complex. They seemed poised to change the face of metal as a next-generation OPETH, a band for whom the sky was the limit.

"Gloria" could be the debut album from an entirely different band. Here we get strange electronic metal, stripped-down and streamlined riffing, vocals that rarely rise above digitally-treated spoken word, and strange production choices that bring the sound into some dour, unwelcoming middle ground between PORCUPINE TREE and RAMMSTEIN. It's ambitious, sure, and the band had to know they'd alienate most of the people who like their debut, so you gotta give them credit for the brass balls required to embark on such a course.

Unfortunately, blind ambition without focus or good ideas usually leads to a mess. What we get on "Gloria" is a muddled, confusing and joyless mash of bad electronica, overwrought theatrical vocals, boring riffs, and pretentious noodling. There's a sodden, depressed aura throughout, not so much atmospheric as oppressive, and even when there's a glimmer of interesting music (as on "Dread It"),the miserable vibe and maudlin, mumbled vocals kill off the interest quickly.

In fact, the chorus of "Dread It" is one of the few moments where an interesting, progressive metal band can still be heard sounding like they aren't asleep at the switch. Compare this to "Don't Go Any Further", a wretched and painful song built around a repetitive stanza of spoken words and tired industrial metal sounds, or the ludicrous title track, an epic of meandering treated guitars and blasé vocals. Frustration again sets in on "The Hole We Are In", a dense, unforgiving song with as many intelligent, emotional, heavy jamming parts as there are dreary programmed sounds and uninspired passages.

Someone will probably defend DISILLUSION by saying that what they've done on "Gloria" is just too groundbreaking, and that uneducated hessians like us just can't wrap our heads around it. That ain't it, folks — we've heard gloomy Goth rock before, we've watched extreme metal bands follow uncharted paths to disaster before, and we know a failed experiment when we hear one.

Author:
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • reddit
  • email

Comments Disclaimer And Information

BLABBERMOUTH.NET uses the Facebook Comments plugin to let people comment on content on the site using their Facebook account. The comments reside on Facebook servers and are not stored on BLABBERMOUTH.NET. To comment on a BLABBERMOUTH.NET story or review, you must be logged in to an active personal account on Facebook. Once you're logged in, you will be able to comment. User comments or postings do not reflect the viewpoint of BLABBERMOUTH.NET and BLABBERMOUTH.NET does not endorse, or guarantee the accuracy of, any user comment. To report spam or any abusive, obscene, defamatory, racist, homophobic or threatening comments, or anything that may violate any applicable laws, use the "Report to Facebook" and "Mark as spam" links that appear next to the comments themselves. To do so, click the downward arrow on the top-right corner of the Facebook comment (the arrow is invisible until you roll over it) and select the appropriate action. You can also send an e-mail to blabbermouthinbox(@)gmail.com with pertinent details. BLABBERMOUTH.NET reserves the right to "hide" comments that may be considered offensive, illegal or inappropriate and to "ban" users that violate the site's Terms Of Service. Hidden comments will still appear to the user and to the user's Facebook friends. If a new comment is published from a "banned" user or contains a blacklisted word, this comment will automatically have limited visibility (the "banned" user's comments will only be visible to the user and the user's Facebook friends).