When previously covering An Abstract Illusion‘s sophomore album release Woe, this annoyed Gator threw down the hammer hard in a review that many around me considered unduly harsh. The album seemed to catch people’s attention with its long form atmospheric take on progressive death metal, reminiscent of the soaring lead guitars of Fallujah, and the Phrygian mode-unease of Opeth. While these two name-drops might seem a tad reductive, parts of Woe really did sound like a patchwork of Opeth-fueled transitions at the time. Revisiting Woe in this day and age still reveals its biggest fault to be its songwriting approach. No one likes listening to an album one does not enjoy over and over again just to give it a poor review. And, unfortunately, Woe set itself apart from its influences by being a frustrating riff salad—a smattering of punches in no particular direction with no target. As time goes along, you can either conclude that a band isn’t for you, or give them another shot. In the Gator’s semi-advanced age, a conciliary mindset directed him to pick up the promo for The Sleeping City. But pressing play on “Blackmurmur”, and sitting through seven minutes of intro before the song reaches its four minutes of actual meat had him moments away from reaching for the metaphorical knife again.
The kind of music An Abstract Illusion makes relies primarily on novelty. It’s entirely possible to make worthwhile songs that often go into the “whoah, where the hell did that come from”-mode of writing, and a lot of prog death artists I enjoy roam in that kind of linearly written world with success. However, if there is no good connecting tissue in this kind of song, the novelty will keep diminishing each time I hear it, and I will soon lose any interest in returning. If I blurt out “UNICORN!”, “SHIT!”, “BIRTHDAY CAKE” in quick succession, those would be novel statements that would also lose their impact when you’ve heard me utter them a few times. If I instead say “That unicorn shit on my birthday cake, never trust unicorns”, the connecting ideas make for a fun story with some longevity, with its novelty lasting because of the meaning. Thankfully, there are signs that An Abstract Illusion are getting better at telling people about the evils of unicorns on The Sleeping City (the Lovecraft stories with the unicorns are the good ones, yeah?). That first stumble aside, many songs on An Abstract Illusion‘s new album have a tighter melodic backbone that helps their slow builds out by adding better context and flow. “No Dreams Beyond Empty Horizons” has a skillfully used dissonant guitar riff that adds tension while the drums propel the song forward; Isak Nilsson‘s drums often pull the weight of the songs when the sleepwalking build-ups threaten to sedate. The vocal performance is fairly tight throughout, with no mishaps like the awful spoken word on “Blomsterkrans” off Woe, and one of the band members (unsure who, as three band members are credited with vocals) adds some well placed shrieks in the vein of Peter Benjamin‘s performance on Voices albums. These two elements keeps The Sleeping City from floating away completely into prog land.
The biggest novelty of An Abstract Illusion‘s sound consists of crash test dummy-intense bursts of death metal (“Like a Geyser Ever Erupting”) that you can’t help but slow-motion raise your eyebrows at when they crash into the meek progressive rock influence. It’s a neat trick, but also used far too often by the band as a crutch to cover up for their other go-to novelty, slow build ups that often lead nowhere. Unfortunately, this second crutch is littered throughout The Sleeping City, and makes it a lesser work than I wish it was. To my surprise, it’s when The Sleeping City commits hardest to its lighter prog influences where I think it finds success. “Frost Flower” is a weird track that starts out with a fragile vocal performance recalling a Katatonia or Vola song (dat bASS), before bringing in flute to cross the Vola-vibes with the folky feeling of Amorphis, then ending on some David Gilmore-inspired (Pink Floyd) soloing that finally makes one of An Abstract Illusion‘s build ups click firmly into place. Likewise, “Silverfields” sounds like something that could have been made by Europe, setting up the beautiful progressive rock that is “The Sleeping City”, where only some dilution of death metal adds flavor in the right way. An Abstract Illusion seem to think that big and epic contrasting transitions are their strength and they prefer to write in this mode. But when they cast off this pretense and commit to something new, they sound much more competent and confident as writers. I want to score this album higher for its clear improvements, but in the end I find it flawed, as blunders like “Emmett” and the opening track are the stronger trend that shows that An Abstract Illusion‘s transformation into a great band isn’t done yet. I don’t know if it’s the concept that’s spawned this evolution in sound, but whatever it is they have a good shot at producing something great in the future if they keep going in this direction. Just watch out for those unicorns, they tend to fuck up the good flow in a song more often than not.
