Review Summary: Touching and powerful; chaotic while clear; moving and ruled by emotions; Back To Times Of Splendor is completely and utterly timeless.
"And every tone cuts deep as rain in april
Every chord they form tears open the wounds"
Sometimes, it’s hard to approach your favourite albums with anything short of a complete fan boy attitude. It’s hard to describe them with anything but complete praise, and idolisation. It is also easy to get overly pretentious when you try to recommend, so when I say Back To Times Of Splendor is the sound of Fall, the sound of raindrops cascading down a mountainside. It’s the sound of emotion, love, hate and betrayal all in one. It’s the sound of birth, death and life, crashing together and ending all too soon. Back To Times Of Splendor is the sound of triumph and failure, the sound of gain and loss, the sound of poetry being muttered quietly in case the emotion flutters away. It’s the sound of everything you take for granted, the music that graces your ears without you even knowing, it’s an emotional masterpiece that will never be recreated ever again, Back To Times Of Splendor is utter bliss, a masterpiece that doesn’t need to be loved by everyone, as those who do will find more than enough to last a lifetime, know that I say it as truthfully as anything I’ve ever said about an album before, and for me; Back To Times Of Splendor is all of this and more.
Needless to say, if you haven’t guessed it already, this album is an album that is as close to me as any physical possession, as treasured as any memory and as powerful and moving as any piece of literature or art. Three years ago, if you’d have told me music could have had such an effect on me, I would have never imagined you correct; but three years ago, the music of Disillusion hadn’t graced my ears. For all the riffs, melodies and voices that I have heard, none of them can compare to those that feature in Back To Times Of Splendor, and I fear that none ever will. For me, an album of this caliber only comes ever so often in a lifetime. I could try to search through every band that is similar to this, try and look for every album that bears some comparison to this, but none would ever come close. It’s not the idea of Back To Times Of Splendor that makes it so good, not even the execution, it’s something else. Something that cannot be described in words; I don’t know if you reading this has or will feel this way with an album, and I can’t promise that you will, all I can do is recommend this to you no matter what kind of metal or rock you like. Be it death metal, prog rock, folk metal, this album isn’t about playing music in a genre, it’s just completely about the music itself.
"There is a road that I must travel, may it be paved or unseen
May I be hindered by a thousand stones, still onward I'd crawl down on my knees"
Disillusion’s music is filled with different layers; different tiny pieces of a seamless musical piece of art. Acoustic guitars will go hand in hand with metal riffs; soothing synth melodies will compliment Vurtox’s magnificently emotional singing while guitars and drums crash around them. It’s an accomplishment in itself to make an album with so many different faces and moods completely seamless, but it’s another accomplishment in itself to make the entire album keep it’s emotional and sincere core without getting stale. Back To Times Of Splendor is consistently impressive in every moment of it’s almost hour-long length; be it with the soft, acoustic moments or the blazingly heavy sections, yet in all instances the atmosphere is retained, that warm, rich atmosphere that puts Disillusion above the moniker of just a metal band and into realms that only the most talented of bands reach. It’s almost impossible to pick out any single thing which makes Back To Times Of Splendor this good, as every single thing is perfect (and I don’t use that word often). Be it Vurtox’s unique and ridiculously emotional vocals, growled or sung, the way that the guitars roll around one riff after another without losing steam, or the general production of the album. The fact of the matter is, while most other albums have a few niggling flaws that otherwise takes away the splendor of the album, Back To Times Of Splendor doesn’t feature any of this. There is no filler, no misplaced instrument or riff, no annoying out of place sections, no, Back To Times Of Splendor is as close to musical perfection as you can get.
Though that last statement might make me sound moronic, it is nonetheless a statement that I stand by. For all the times I’ve listened to this album, never once have I found something which has irritated me, never once have I found myself bored while listening. It is unique the way that Disillusion can captivate you so, while making it sound so utterly easy, even the most laid back and least aggressive moments of the album have you breathless thanks to the bands amazing ability to make everything sound so gorgeously beautiful. When atmospheric piano and acoustic guitars gently caress your ears for a while and are then completely overpowered by a huge majestic riff I guarantee that it will never fail to leave your jaw on the floor.
Picking out the best moments on this album is impossible to do, as both the instrumental sections and the more vocally driven parts are both delivered with the same power and passion. Take for example the song ‘A Day By The Lake’, which centers around gorgeous, barely substantial guitar melodies and acoustic strumming for nearly two minutes, before you’re introduced to the heavy (while still melodic) guitar riffs for a short while. It is more than half way through the song when you finally get treated to Vurtox’s soft, cleanly sung vocals that the instruments seem to wash over beautifully before once again being overpowered by the forceful guitars. The song finishes with Vurtox singing desperately ‘Knowing, this is coming to an end / But still I am hoping that fall will never come.’ The song finishes in silence, forebodingly bringing about the seventeen minute monster ‘The Sleep of Restless Hours’.
Hell, ‘The Sleep Of Restless Hours’ is an entirely different beast altogether from ‘Fall’, and bears more similarities to the more fanatic and aggressive ‘Alone I Stand in Fires’, but there is just too much to write about with any one song from this album, as each one has so many tiny little layers that while seemingly insignificant at first eventually reveal themselves to be painting an integral part of a larger picture, displaying a small but entirely necessary piece of the ridiculously rich atmosphere. Things like the barely noticeable synth in the first half of ‘Fall’, or the briefly appearing piano in ‘And The Mirror Cracked’ make a huge impact on the overall sound, but are barely noticeable at first above the rest of the tapestry. Like the way in which the obvious focus of a picture distracts your attention from the smaller subtleties, the singing and melodies will at first attract your attention away from the hundreds of other little things that make the sound all the more complete and fulfilling in the long run.
I could lavish on another dozen compliments to this album, I could find countless more reasons why you should give this a chance, but if what I haven’t already said isn’t enough to convince you that this album is absolutely essential then I don’t know what is. In Back To Times Of Splendor, Disillusion crafted a masterpiece that hasn’t been matched since. I can honestly say that Back To Times Of Splendor isn’t just music, it’s an experience akin to anything else that you might experience in life, and like life, this has its ups and downs emotionally, has its chaotic moments and its moments of clarity and like those experiences in life, it is impossible to forget. Back To Times Of Splendor is completely and utterly timeless.
"Thus, I write all this down for you to know I've been here
Close enough to almost feel your breath
Write this down for you to know
I've slept the sleep of restless hours
And when I woke, I left with knowing I would be back"
