Review: Light Dweller/Aoecist/Sleep Paralysis – Illusory Dissolvents

Artwork by Alan Brucke, Stephen Knapp

Style: Dissonant Death Metal, Dissonant Black Metal (Harsh Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Gorguts, Ulcerate, Imperial Triumphant, Blut Aus Nord
Country: USA (Light Dweller – AZ, Aoecist – IL, Sleep Paralysis – AZ)
Release date: 10 October 2025

Metal is perhaps the most fertile breeding ground for solo artists who boast the audacity to strike out on their own in a scene historically dominated by full ensembles. Whether such an endeavor is the result of masochistic tendencies, unrestrained aspirations, or simply a genuine love for the process varies case by case, though most commonly the answer seems to be some amalgamation of all these reasons and more. Gone is the stigma of the basement-dwelling neckbeard outcast (mostly); instead, the solo artist is a vital component—often even the lifeblood—of the underground music ecosystem, lauded for their ambition and uncompromising ideals. Unfortunately, the solo artist scene is often just as rife with pale imitators and horrid musical ventures as the rest of the genre it belongs to. Such is the nature of the underground: one must wade through the muck before they can find gold.

Stumbling across this metaphorical gold once is rare enough, yet today I’ve hit the motherload: three beautiful nuggets that have slowly revealed themselves through the patient sifting of my musical prospecting sluice. Illusory Dissolvents is a split featuring the latest compositions from three up and coming underground metal solo artists: Light Dweller (Cameron Boesch), Aoecist (Alan Brucke), and Sleep Paralysis (Stephen Knapp). Each has varying lengths of tenure within the dissonant death metal scene, but they’ve united together to further explore their particular brand of underground solo-artistry, resulting in a varied yet unified offering.

Illusory Dissolvents comes out of the gate running, starting with Light Dweller’s only track on the split, the longest of the lot by far. “Caste Wrought in the Ash of Abandoned Sovereigns” is a gargantuan slab of dense, through-composed dissodeath, clocking in at an even fourteen minutes. Although Boesch is no stranger to long track lengths, “Sovereigns” is the longest of his discography thus far; compound the length with Boesch’s particularly busy songwriting style within an already dense genre, and there is a very real threat of Illusory Dissolvents being dead on arrival. Thankfully, Boesch is a hardened veteran, remaining calm under pressure and successfully crafting a strikingly cohesive piece, despite its length and lack of repetition.

“Sovereigns” starts with a simple phrase played on a clean guitar tone, which is quickly ramped up to eleven, turning on the distortion and stretching the introductory melodic idea over oscillating bars of 9/8, 11/8, and 7/8 time. Pummeling double bass and off-kilter snare accents do little to anchor the feel, though Boesch’s strong melodic sensibilities keep things from ever veering too far off the rails. “Sovereigns” barely ever lets up from here, plowing through riff after riff, each containing its own quirks and complexities. A very brief reprieve does appear a couple of minutes into the track in the form of a shimmering arpeggiated guitar motif played on a glistening clean tone, which Boesch smartly uses as a recurring theme that spans the entirety of “Sovereigns”. The motif is recontextualized in various forms over the course of the track, but is mostly used as a background textural mechanism or transitional material. Still, the motif is practically the only recurring theme in “Sovereigns”, so even if the listener doesn’t notice its first pass, its repetition ensures that by the time it returns for the final climax the listener is primed—even if only subconsciously—for a massive payoff. That Boesch is able to take such a subtle detail of such a labyrinthine song and turn it into an effective conceptual throughline is a testament to his songwriting prowess.

The unenviable task of following up such a successful, ambitious track falls on Brucke, and it’s made all the more difficult by the striking difference between Boesch’s and Brucke’s songwriting approaches. Aoecist—while still firmly within the camp of dissodeath—plays a style that has a much heavier focus on atmosphere, relying on crushing tone and a lurching, mid-tempo groove-oriented riffing conceit. “Perceived From The Beyond” introduces Brucke’s portion of Illusory Dissolvents with a low, held out microtonal interval that is significantly longer than any single note on the entirety of “Sovereigns”, inducing a slight feeling of whiplash as far as the split’s pacing is concerned. Brucke’s riffs swell along a narrow path, iterating upon themselves with elusive microtonal harmonies that are often nigh-unrecognizable despite the clear production. 

Such precise harmonic interplay gives Aoecist a feeling of cold detachment, especially when combined with the subtle electronic textures that hang like a menacing cloud—one can nearly smell the ozone leaking through the tears. The atmosphere reaches its zenith in the final moments of “Infinitesimally Superficial”: the guitars are fully replaced by blistering synth textures that are forcefully pulled along their axis by blasting drums, and Brucke’s vocal performance crests past its previously restrained bellowing, culminating in a manic sputtering that further punctuates the dramatic terminus. Despite all of the interesting harmonies and textures throughout, Aoecist’s side of the split still unfortunately ends up feeling comparatively pedestrian to its bookends. Brucke’s songwriting is overall less focused than his contemporaries, and his consistent midtempo approach can put a damper on Illusory Dissolvent’s pacing. 

The transition from Aoecist to Sleep Paralysis’ material is much more effective than that before it. Knapp starts his side of Illusory Dissolvents similarly to Brucke: low, held-out guitar tones underpin an ominous swelling choir, allowing the listener to come up for a fetid gasp of air as the anxious atmosphere built across Brucke’s four tracks is maintained. I was a big fan of the Sleep Paralysis debut—which was packed with unique experimentation ranging from chiptune to Joplin-esque swing—and am happy to report that Knapp’s particular brand of weirdo death metal is as effective as ever. Knapp approaches his new material from a different angle, with a stripped back, darker tone that can make the music feel relatively homogenous. Gone entirely are the humorous, parody-approaching eclecticisms of the debut, replaced instead by a much more subtly intimate psyche-intruding uneasiness. Odd, jovial moments still emerge from the murk, but are kept more in line with furthering the dreadful atmosphere than approximating a smirking, antagonistic (though extremely effective) pastiche. Both iterations of Sleep Paralysis are effective: the sound of the debut was perhaps more brazenly conspicuous, but the sound presented on Illusory Dissolvents retains the core of what I liked so much about Knapp’s musical identity while continuing to sharpen its obsidian edge. Knapp has a knack for balancing tired genre tropes and audacious songcraft, never falling too far into either camp while bridging the gap between them, creating some odd no man’s land that is entirely his own.

The styles of Boesch, Brucke, and Knapp are three sides of the same ontologically warped coin, each face whispering forgotten secrets about the others while perpetually spinning through the air. Illusory Dissolvents is unified in its artists’ experimentation with their core styles, shedding musical layers and exploring their essential sounds. “Sovereigns” is noticeably devoid of the harsh industrial textures that permeated Boesch’s previous work; Aoecist approaches microtonality with a finer hand than before, a restraint mirrored by lumbering pace, oppressive atmosphere, and crushing tone; and Sleep Paralysis exorcises nearly the entirety of its satirical spirit, leaving only the rumblings of the stygian pit within which it was chained. Whether the result of a mutual compositional challenge or merely coincidence, the shared “back to basics” focus is an effective theme for Illusory Dissolvents, especially for the few of us weirdos who were already fans of all three artists. Sure, the pacing of the split is imperfect, and the quality can waver from track to track, but Illusory Dissolvents remains a successful exploratory foray into the fringes of dissodeath. 

Recommended tracks: Caste Wrought in the Ash of Abandoned Sovereigns, Infinitesimally Superficial, Apartheid Genocide
You may also like: Gigan, Coma Cluster Void, Charnel Grounds, Noctambulist
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook (Light Dweller) (Sleep Paralysis) | Instagram (Light Dweller) (Sleep Paralysis) (Aeocist) | Metal-Archives (Light Dweller) (Sleep Paralysis)

Label: Hauntology Records – Bandcamp | Instagram

Light Dweller is:
– Cameron Boesch (everything)
Aoecist is:
– Alan Brucke (everything)
Sleep Paralysis is:
– Stephen Knapp (everything)