Chaps, you almost lost me. To explain why Illusions Dead – a four piece from Finland, producing extreme blackened-death metal almost had me turned off completely, I have to tell you a story. Some *ahem* twenty-five years ago, my tape player packed up. I couldn’t afford a new one, but a family friend gave me another which he had scavenged from a rubbish tip. It was louder than anything I had owned before, but had a weird sonic quality – it ramped up the bottom end of every tape I played, and buried all the top end treble under some kind of weird flattened sound. (As an aside, it made listening to Metallica’s …And Justice For All a really great experience that I have never been able to replicate since!). Well, the production of Illusions Dead was a bit like that. I had to check my headphones to make sure that they were plugged in properly and that there was no problem with the cable. Nope, it seems that the album is produced to sound like this.Why is this such a problem? Well, firstly because what I can hear of the songs is really good. I really enjoy the marriage of slightly out-of-control sounding melodic death metal and blackened guitars and vocals, except of course, that the famous icy tone that one would normally expect from such an approach is smothered, as if under a thick layer of soil. It flattens the whole experience, making it quite a distant listen. This is really disappointing, because as I have said, the songs themselves are actually really good fun, as with the raging third track “Shadow and Flame”, which contains more furious spikiness than a porcupine on PCP, like Swordmaster at their very best, but less controlled. Where the vocals should be screaming though, they are completely flattened and neutered.
It’s the same problem throughout – some good, solid song writing, what appears to be good playing and a raw, primitive approach to having melodic licks in the songs, hampered by the sub-par production. As it is, all I can say is that this is an album which shows an absolute boat load of promise, and once my ears had acclimatised, I did find myself enjoying it rather a lot, but with a better mix, this could have been a really strong release. There’s still rather a lot to enjoy for those of you who have a forgiving nature, and as for myself, I’d really like to hear this with an improved production. The first run has a mere 200 cds, so perhaps a later run might correct some of the weird sound?
(5/10 Chris Davison)
21/03/2016 at 1:47 pm
“The first run has a mere 200 cds, so perhaps a later run might correct some of the weird sound?”
Correct! We decided to have it re-mixed when/if there’s a re-release. Thanks for the review!