Inspired By Illusions - INITIO (2021)

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.

BANDCAMP

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.

In The Time Of Giants - Inheritance (2022)

Do giants experience time slower than humans, since they're bigger? I'd have never thought to think of that question if it wasn't for Benn Jordan's recent video about that subject (well, with animals, not giants, since, you know, giants don't exist) but after seeing that video, I couldn't help but think of it. Nothing to do with this album, but...

BANDCAMP

01. Crawk
02. Apatelepathy
03. Isosceles
04. Mr. Freeze
05. Inheritance
06. Rend
07. Somber
08. Dibbins
09. Slow Parable
10. Return
11. Spacewind
12. Reach For The Heavens
13. Digitalism
14. Wicked Game (Chris Isaak cover)

With a name like "In The Time of Giants", an artist could make two kinds of music and it wouldn't feel like a misnomer: epic doom metal or emo pop punk/metalcore. This is neither, but it is pretty epic and it does have some emo vibes pop up from time to time, and it has a lot of catchy and sparkly-sounding stuff, so... actually, somehow this feels like exactly the kind of music that you'd expect In The Time Of Giants to sound like.

This is a very solid album, in that it's consistent but has enough variation to keep it fresh and engaging. This stuff is dripping with nostalgia for bands that dominated MTV; I could easily visualise most of the songs on this album having music videos shot at parking lots with burning bins/cars/band members, dirty public toilets and other locations like that (although the fact that most songs are instrumental lessens the intensity of that visualisation).

The absolute standout track to me is Rend with its groovy heavy riffage and burning intensity, while Dibbins is a song that more or less cycles through every vibe present on this album.

The vocals make me think of a greasy alcoholic with messy hair and a scrawny goatee sitting on a porch in an off-white tank top with questionable stains who's seen it all, having flashbacks to whatever horrors he has witnessed. You might think that sounds like an insult, but I don't mean it like that; if anything, it really hammers home the feeling of this album as something reminiscent of harder times of the past. On the other hand, the electronic elements give it a modern touch, a hint of a future where we live in a technological utopia; it can't be a dystopia with all the hopeful melodies that permeate the album, can it? They do get melancholic, too, though...

Personally, I feel like a lot of the instrumental songs would be better and more memorable with vocals, because they tend to sound like they'd have space for vocals and to my ears that leaves them sounding somewhat incomplete. However, this is of course entirely subjective, and I'll admit I'm heavily biased in favour of music that has vocals, with only rare exceptions.

I'd say this album encapsulates a feeling of a late night where you're not sure what the future holds, feeling conflicted over fears and hopes. That vibe is wrapped up with the last song, a cover of a song I'd forgotten exists and never knew who it was originally by. This rendition of it, at least in the context of this album, somehow sounds to me like a last plea for confirmation that the future will be a utopia and not a cyberpunk dystopia.

Enjoyability: 7/10
Relistenability: 7/10
Memorability: 6/10
Coherence: 8/10
Flow: 9/10
Originality: 6/10
Epicness: 8/10
Nutshell: If prog metal/rock would be your favourite thing if only it didn't have so much proggery, this will be your favourite album.