Album: Gloria
Artist: Disillusion

By Adam Jonathan Pugh

Prior to hearing Gloria by Disillusion I believed I’d heard most everything in the metal genre. Yet, when I first listened to Disillusion I was caught off guard by the effortless sound produced on the song Dread It. What came out was a voice much akin to Peter Steele of Type O Negative, minus the creep-factor. The guitar line alone piqued my interest with its odd time signature, yet full on groove.

After finally getting my hands on a full copy of the album I’ve been sonically slapped repeatedly by the melding of so many genres, and it actually makes sense. The trio have taken small bits of strings, metal riffs, sparse landscapes, and time signatures to create a listening adventure. Vocalist ‘Vurtox’ fluctuates from a glorious melody to a low growling spoken word insertion of “Umms” and “Ahhhs” taking strange forms throughout each track. At one point he sounds like he is leaving a voicemail on the track Don’t Go Any Further: “Umm… I saw you this morning…when you were ironing all the uh, all the stuff we need for ourselves, and you were cleansing it, and I know it’s all… it’s all important you know. To see you and all and keeping the lines straight or whatever, anyway, what I wanted to say, what I wanted to say is: Don’t Go Any Further.”

That was one of the strangest intros to a song I have heard in awhile and then the music kicks in, and it all made sense. And that is exactly what this record does, it takes the many wonderful parts of the metal genre, and reinvents it to create something entirely different. Gloria is a complete album instead of just a bunch of songs lumped together.

This will definitely please those metalheads who like something a little bit different. These guys will wipe away all illusions that they are just another metal band splattering the landscape of modern music, and instead they enhance it.

9 out of 10

Originally published in 2008 on the music site Mammoth Press