That album cover kinda makes me think of the film The Giver... and I really like that film, no matter how much people shit on it.
01. Solar Eclipse
02. Mesosphere: Home Of The Shooting Stars
03. A Glance Upon The Red Sky
04. When Cloud-Castles Emerge
05. Nebulæ
06. Illudium Q-36
This album is reminiscent of a journey through space. It starts off slow and predictable, honestly in a way that could be called somewhat uneventful and even uninteresting (although I wouldn't call it that), but soon picks up as you drift past the boundaries of the solar system and enter unexplored territory. Maybe that's not a good analogy since even the "uneventful" first two songs are still cool and interesting even if they sound like one big post-rock déjà vu, and it never gets off-the-wall experimental or anything, but the album has a space theme and it does sound like space travel music, and I do think the comparison works well enough.
The first "wow" moment comes at the end of the third track. The epicness gets so intense that I'm sure even a roomful of sweaty space sailors would say it's OK to cry. I mean, I didn't cry the first time I heard the song and I haven't cried on subsequent listens, but... I would understand if I had cried the first time I heard it, or if I will one day cry when I listen to that song.
Even though Pink Floyd never went anywhere close to as metal as these guys go at the very core of their sound, there are some Pink Floyd-esque vibes sprinkled throughout this album. It's not just that the album cover looks vaguely like The Dark Side of the Moon, why I think that, I promise... unless I'm wrong, but I don't think I am.
Another band I have to mention as a comparison is Keoma, particularly their EP Otvot's Orbit. This is a lot beefier (because of how it's mixed and mastered; the mixing and mastering on most of Keoma's stuff is frankly dry ass in my opinion, which is a shame because they kicked a ton of ass; I mean, they probably still do, but they're not the same without Jasse; I will give their more recent stuff a proper chance later, but this review of an entirely different band isn't the place to ramble about that), but there's a lot of shared soundscape in terms of riffage and vibes. Like, if you had a mood board (whatever that even is) for albums, you'd likely put this album and Keoma's Otvot's Orbit on the same one. And maybe some Pink Floyd album, or maybe not. I don't know, I'm not a professional music reviewer or mood board enthusiast.
The last song, Illudium Q-36, might be the best, although it's hard to say because all the songs are really good. However, that song is overall the proggiest, and has the most beautiful melodies, so it really drives home that these guys didn't just want to make a good album and leave it at that but that they wanted to make it impressive. If you're a prog fan of the wank nerd variety, you're likely to say I'm easily impressed, but this isn't wank nerd prog. This is stuff that prioritises the atmosphere, with additional focus on being groovy and heavy. If you want wank nerd prog, go listen to Protest the Hero or something. (And as a disclaimer for the hordes of wank nerds about to zig-zag tapdance in 13/16 my way, I have nothing against Protest the Hero or that kind of stuff in general, in fact I like it, but if that's what you expect to hear every time you listen to anything mentioned as being even remotely prog-adjacent, you're just making life less enjoyable for yourself.)
Overall, this is a very enjoyable album and it's exciting to hear what Inspired By Illusions do in the future, but in my opinion only the third and sixth songs really stand out as altogether great songs on their own. The fact that it's all instrumental doesn't detract from it at all, but I could imagine vocals adding that final cherry on top at times; that's not to say I hope they'll get a vocalist, though, because vocals could easily also detract from the instrumental goodness and the percentage of time on this album where I think about the possibility of how it would sound with some hypothetical vocals is probably only around 10% or so.
Enjoyability: 9/10
Relistenability: 7/10
Memorability: 6/10
Coherence: 9/10
Flow: 8/10
Originality: 5/10
Epicness: 8/10
Nutshell: If these guys are inspired by illusions, I hope they get more illusions in the future.
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