Review: An Abstract Illusion – Woe

Style: Atmospheric Death Metal, Prog Metal, Black Metal (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Kardashev, Insomnium, Opeth, Ne Obliviscaris, Kauan
Review by: Zach and Andy
Country: Sweden
Release date: 9 September, 2022

Hello readers! We’re excited to introduce somewhat of a special occasion for us at The Progressive Subway: an album double review! Yep, a review for An Abstract Illusion (AAI) is quite the coveted one as two of our esteemed experts in progressive death metal, Zach and Andy, were at odds as to whom could have the opportunity to review them. Truth be told, Andy called dibs on the band first and he was gracious enough to let Zach join. Without further ado, please enjoy this dynamic duo review AAI‘s Woe.

Zach:

Band hiatuses are a funny thing. The word “hiatus” may be pushing it, as there are plenty of cases where the band just shuts up until they’re in the studio. Let’s be honest, who’d want to hear “Just wrote another bar of music today!”, followed by “Just deleted that bar…” every week for a year? Because that’s basically all we’d be getting. Now, it’s nice to see your favorite member showing little snippets of new stuff just to know they’re still kicking. I know I damn near screeched when Dean Lamb of Archspire pulled out a riff that would go on to be in ‘The Golden Mouth of Ruin’ on a livestream years ago. The esteemed Waldorf of Aquilus graced us with a killer album out of nowhere eleven years after his debut after everyone suspected he’d just moved on. What’s the reason these two musicians, playing vastly different genres, took so damn long? Simple. Their music is complex as hell.

Now, there’s the other scenario. Bands that say “It’s coming! It’s coming! Just be patient and it’ll be ready this year!” for about ten years. The difference between Tool and Wintersun is that the former didn’t ask fans to crowdfund them a whole studio and never deliver. Hey, at least Fear Inoculum was something. 

An Abstract Illusion never said, “Guys, guys! It’s coming!” In fact, the only kind of update we got was in February of 2020 with the picture of Pro Tools and the caption “trjede,” Swedish for third. Six full years since the band released Illuminate the Path, an album I consider to be a masterwork of prog-death only reached by the likes of Ne Obliviscaris, Woe was announced. Surely, this amount of hype and anticipation will only breed disappointment when Trejde finally releases?

Trejde finally came to me and my co-reviewer Andy in a promo about two weeks ago. After countless listens, and multiple investigations on what they feed the musicians in Norrobotten, Sweden, I can confirm that Woe is a massive, massive album.

While their previous effort, Illuminate the Path, was mainly about nature, it’s immediately clear with ‘The Behemoth That Lies Asleep’ that they’ve taken a more narrative approach with Woe. The song keeps you uncomfortable from the start, with those harsh vocals waiting to strike underneath the cleans, dropping you right into ‘Slaves’, whose first lines immediately paint a clear picture of what this album is about. “Following blindly/Ideology of sheep. Promises of heaven and paradise/in the name of oppression, inequality”. Yeah, looks like it’s time to delve into the insanity of a cult.

Now, unfortunately, I don’t have the time nor paragraph space to delve into the story as a whole, but I firmly believe it’s about the rape (metaphorical or otherwise) and subsequent death of a woman in the cult, and the entire group being dragged to hell as a result. To be fair, I never doubted the lyrical abilities of An Abstract Illusion, but I never expected such horrific lyrics to come from a band that wrote about the beauty of the Himalayas. ‘Slaves’ was enough to tip me off that this would be darker, but some of the lyrics on here would make Opeth in their prime blush. I’d encourage you all to read along with the story with each song and to run the spoken-word interlude track ‘Blomsterkrans’ through Google Translate if you don’t speak Swedish.

But with that darker lyrical sensibility, the core sound remains very much the same, and I mean that in the best way. The atmosphere switches between downright jaw-dropping and suffocating at the drop of a hat. Those beautiful keyboard melodies that provided my favorite moments on Illuminate are even more prevalent here. But what’s going to keep Woe in my brain longer than any other album this year is the sheer number of unexpected moments on this album.

Prog, for me, is a genre that throws the boundaries of what a song can do right out the window. When I first began my journey into the subgenre, everything was unexpected. Now, I can tell when the clean guitar/saxophone solo/ukulele shredding sections are coming; however, I didn’t expect “guitar solo over 808s” to be on my list of favorite things this year. This moment in ‘Tear Down This Holy Mountain’ would be downright silly if not executed correctly, especially on an album this serious so far. I can’t explain it, but even though it’s so unexpected, it just works. It was the first moment in prog that caught me truly off guard in a minute, and that speaks volumes for An Abstract Illusion’s skill.

Each time I think that this album has shown me all of its tricks, I’m continuously proven wrong. ‘Prosperity’ might just be the greatest song they’ve ever written, rounding out with an ending riff heavy enough to kill an elephant. ‘In The Heavens Above, You Will Become a Monster’ continues the tradition of AAI songs having the coolest titles along with being the shortest feeling 14-minute song all year, and ‘This Torment Has No End, Only New Beginnings’ closes the album with not only another hard-hitter but also sheer beauty in its clean guitars and keyboards.

Woe reminds me why prog-death will forever be my favorite subgenre. The skill it takes to make something of this magnitude can’t be put into words and can only be heard in the album itself. I get why they took so long to make Trejde now: they had to make it completely, utterly ironed out. Without a bit of filler, failed riffage or lyrics that fell flat. I can only imagine the long hours these three poured over every single bar of music, all while staying relatively silent the whole time. I can also imagine how excited they were to finally share it with the world.

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Recommended tracks: Tear Down This Holy Mountain, Prosperity, In The Heavens Above: You Will Become a Monster. The entire album is supposed to be one long song, though.
You may also like: Aquilus, Countless Skies, Burial in the Sky, Amiensus, Hands of Despair, Wills Dissolve   
Final verdict: 9.5/10

Andy:

Peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, prog fans and one track albums: Some things are simply inseparable. So upon An Abstract Illusion announcing that their sophomore album, Woe, would function as a single song split into seven movements, anticipation reached an all time high for yours truly. Ever since Illuminate the Path so expertly wove together black metal’s penchant for atmosphere with progressive structuring and death metal’s guitar heroics, I have longed for a follow-up, and since its announcement, I just knew I had to grab Woe to review. The album being one track made it simply perfect; however, on Woe tracks flow together with a similar cadence as Stortregn’s Impermanence, so while the band technically considers it one song, Woe feels more like an excellently paced album more than anything. As I booted up Woe and listened for the first time, all fears of sophomore slumping absolved themselves.

Indeed, Woe doesn’t just sound as amazing as its predecessor, it actually improves many aspects. “The Behemoth That Lies Asleep,” the placid intro track and tone-setter, may not contain melodies so high as to make the Scandes seem scant but instead utilizes subtle strings and Wills Dissolve-like bubbling synths to craft an impeccable atmosphere out of the silence underneath, showing a matured songwriting to let the whole album build to more satisfying conclusions. This move is not dissimilar to Insomnium during the writing of Winter’s Gate, abandoning more momentary highs to craft a more evolved final product. I will admit I do miss Illuminate the Path’s endless heart-stopping guitar melodies, but Woe further shows the band’s newfound songwriting elegance as the still-present leads sound just a tad more restrained to allow more atmospheric chill sections to truly shine, luring prog fans. Heavier sections feature prominent blast beats and black metal sections, all of which make the levity of an occasional unrestrained guitar solo like at the end of “Slaves” or at 5:45 into “In the Heavens Above, You Will Become a Monster” all the more necessary. The guitarwork is so incredible that it sounds like a slightly less technical Virvum and certainly subscribes to the John Petrucci school of “chocolate cake” guitar tone, the timbre rich and sweet.

Don’t be fooled by my gushing over the axe-work only, though. The drums cascade like a waterfall, and the audible bass rumbles like a glacier. Unfortunately, perhaps (and certainly just a nitpick), the drums and low end do overpower the mix slightly during heavier, Kardashev-inspired sections, but the whole album encompasses such a rich range of sounds at every moment that the cramped production is hardly noticeable because the mix still does a good job of making seemingly dozens of subtle layers audible and cooperative with each other. Furthermore, the overpowering nature of the low end during heavier sections makes the softer, Kauan-adjacent, atmosphere-centric post metal sections stand out even more. These calmer sections among the stormy black and death metal ones best show off the band’s ascension to that of a fully matured, atmospheric prog metal band. Gone are the days of pure ear-candy guitar leads. Here to stay is a new An Abstract Illusion full of a colorful kaleidoscope of sounds: During tranquil moments, seventies prog rock synths and keys expertly weave their way through the album’s amazing clean vocals, wind instruments, strings, a real grand piano, and countless other minute texture enhancers. 

The center track, “Prosperity,” best encapsulates all to love about this album in one single riff. Like Caligula’s Horse’s “Graves,” the last couple minutes of “Prosperity” are made up of a single syncopated riff with some minor variations. While Woe feels absolutely behemoth (pun intended), stuffed with about a trillion ideas, An Abstract Illusion still know exactly how long to play a standout riff. Many of the best progressive bands fail to recognize that when one strikes gold they should dig in the same spot a little longer, but An Abstract Illusion ensure they don’t overwhelm a listener with too much at any given time. To be confident enough to *know* your riff is so solid as to be played a dozen times takes some real swagger. And, of course, that huge death metal ending of “Prosperity” somehow naturally flows into the amazingly luxurious piano-led, string-filled track “Blomsterkrans.” 

Shorter than Illuminate the Path, Woe avoids the bloat of its predecessor, every moment essential to the story told by the music (and lyrics). Even forty-five minutes into Woe, the album dodges expectations with the addition of female vocals to elevate the album to new heights. Every track that makes up Woe constantly shifts styles, blending a multitude of keys, intensity levels, and vocal styles–from Ihsahn-esque raspy screeches and death metal roars to superb cleans and subdued spoken word—into a brilliantly cohesive package. My only gripe with Woe beyond the loudness of the master is in its final moments when “This Torment Has No End, Only New Beginnings” ominously builds in intensity… until it suddenly cuts out. The finale functions not too far off of Leprous’s “The Sky Is Red,” leaving me aching for more, and after so many waxing and waning songwriting habits, the ending feels disappointing–even teasing–to collapse on a waxing gibbous rather than the glory of the full moon. 

I could ironically end the review here to mimic the album, but I won’t because Woe deserves a full conclusion. The album shows a band not at all content to rest on their laurels. An Abstract Illusion admirably pushes themselves to write in a harder-to-tame format like Wills Dissolve and Insomnium did before them, and just like those bands, An Abstract Illusion succeeds in expanding their own boundaries without compromising their established sound. Get swept up in the river that is Woe; be it the raging black metal rapids, the calming streams after, or the entire journey. Every prog metal fan ought to listen to Woe.

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Recommended tracks: Woe (it’s one song…)
You may also like: Wills Dissolve, Virvum, Descend
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | YouTube

An Abstract Illusion is:
– Robert Stenvall (vocals, Keyboards)
– Karl Westerlund (guitars, bass)
– Christian Berglönn (drums)