Review Summary: It’s nice to know Lunar know how to adapt along with the prog metal scene just as much as we have.
I’m extremely partial to
Lunar for two main reasons: One is that the style they made great strides to produce in their 2019 sophomore album
Eidolon was essentially a buffet of all of my favorite prog metal influences - representing musical themes from bands like
Opeth,
Dream Theater,
Mastodon,
Tool,
Psychotic Waltz, and more. Secondly, that album was the subject of my very first metal review. So much time has passed since then and so much has changed with how my taste has developed as a reviewer. It’s not so much that my previous likings have dried out, rather that I’ve been getting into more esoteric genres that I had previously neglected. In the process of getting more experienced, my standards have naturally increased. And in giving this nostalgic band a follow-up review, I must be critical of this change within myself and how it affects my subjective experience of
Lunar’s music.
Enough about me! What about the album, huh?! Is
The Illusionist better than
Eidolon? Is it worse?! I’m not super sure myself; it’s perhaps a bit of both. I can confidently say this vastly exceeds their debut album, which blurred the lines between imitating and plagiarizing
Opeth. But the judgment by comparison is not so easy when it comes to their previous effort.
One aspect that is a definitive plus is that
The Illusionist easily sounds a lot deeper and more professional than their previous discography, giving it a prima facie status that can’t be as easily written off as an amateurish project. This lends itself quite well to the album’s bold and clearly ambitious concept album about a magician whose apparent goal is to push the boundaries of knowledge and power.
Lunar show us that they’ve been studying trends in the modern prog metal scene as well with new tricks up their sleeve, such as various stringed, flute, and of course, saxophone arrangements (it seems we can’t have a trendy prog metal album without sax solos anymore, thanks
Rivers of Nihil). Aside from poking fun at
Lunar, the synchronized, syncopated saxophone/guitar outro on “Disassembled” is one of my favorite moments on the album; pulled off marvelously by Jørgen Munkeby from
Shining. However, the best song of the album is probably the bipartite ten-minute title track; imagine what “Salt” by [b[Caligula’s Horse[/b] would sound like if they added growls, shrieks, tremolo riffs, and a saxophone solo. For those who don’t know what Salt sounds like, this comparison is void. What similarities does it share? What a superb track! It’s more or less tied as my favorite
Lunar song along with “The Cycle Starts Again”.
There is never one precise moment where I can say “A-ha! This is where they ***ed up!”, but this album does drag on a few occasions. We’re already three tracks in and we finally get to the magician’s show in “Show Time”; it’d be a real shame if they used up their best content before the show even began… And the track “Worship the Sun…” what audience is this made for exactly? A prog metal fan who has never listened to “Blackwater Park” and “Scene Six: Home” before? As if the band is trying to force-feed us samples of both! Chances are, if someone is listening to obscure prog metal like this, they’ve heard these compositions done before. And I know,
Eidolon had its unsubtle moments like this as well but the further the band is into their career, the more unforgivable this breed of transgression is.
One thing I did enjoy in
Eidolon was its wealth of riffs; here the band seems to be struggling a bit in that department relative to how far they’ve come in other aspects, especially in their vocal songwriting. Not that this album doesn’t have a lot of riffs, but either they are not as interesting or they just are not the focus as much. It’s partially for this reason that busier sections like much of “Juggling Chainsaws” struggle to retain my attention.
Despite these harsher critiques, I’d call myself a fan of this album and the band. And I resent the cheap treatment they’ve received from much of the press thus far. For an underground prog metal band trying to replicate the sound of mainstream prog metal, I’d say
Lunar is up there close to some of the underappreciated greats like
Altesia.
Attribution: https://theprogressivesubway.com/2023/04/17/review-lunar-the-illusionist/
