Band:	Disillusion
Album:	Gloria
Style:	Progressive metal
Release date:	October 20, 2006
Guest review by:	Darkside Momo

01. The Black Sea
02. Dread It
03. Don't Go Any Further
04. Avalanche
05. Gloria
06. Aerophobic
07. The Hole We Are In
08. Save The Past
09. Lava
10. Too Many Broken Cease Fires
11. Untiefen

A controversial album, to say the least. Disillusion's first effort - Back To Times Of Splendor - was an impressive progressive, melodic death metal album, and was really well received by the metal community. Gloria takes a completely different way, much colder, experimental, leaving death metal far away. That's why a lot of fans of the first album where completely taken aback by 'the new Disillusion'.

Well, if the music is different, it's not less impressive. It's less demonstrative than Back to Times, but no less technical, albeit in a different way; the main focus of this album are arrangements. The voice is really different too: 'Vurtox' Schmidt does not sing that much on this album, he mostly uses a half-spoken half-sung kind of voice, which gives a cold and somewhat industrial feeling.
The songs themselves are very varied. A few examples? "The Black Sea", the opening song, seems quite straight and 'in your face' with its Rammstein-like vocals, but listen well? "Aerophobic" takes some electro music structures in the metal world, with a lot of 'holes' in the sound, to sound like someone suffocating. And then follows immediately the enormous crescendo of "The Hole We Are In", which breaks halfway through the song, to let the tension recede. And so on, each song reveals other surprises (and I haven't even talked of "Gloria"'s jazzy break, or of "Save The Past"'s riff).

The mood is somber and disenchanted; the promo ads used the comparison with David Lynch's films. Not a bad one after all, because both Disillusion and Lynch are strange and bewildering. The lyrics deal mostly with the difficulty to live in the cold, de-humanized, modern-day cities. The mantra like chorus of the song Gloria is a good example, repeated all over the song while the tension grow ever stronger, put in contrast with the sampled church choirs in the background. Another song worthy of notice is "Too Many Broken Cease Fires", which was inspired by Kitano's film Hana Bi.

The only flaw of this album is its production. The sound is cold enough, no problem, but it's sometimes muddled and not clean enough to listen properly to guitars and drums...

To conclude, let's say that Gloria is an excellent album, really unique. In fact, it's my favorite 2006 album, but that's sure that it will not be to everyone's tastes. Well, if you like innovative bands, give it a try!

Highlights: nearly all songs, especially Aerophobic / The Hole We Are In.