Review: An Abstract Illusion – The Sleeping City

Style: Melodic death metal, progressive metal, synth rock (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Ne Obliviscaris, Fallujah, Devin Townsend, Wilderun
Country: Sweden
Release date: 17 October 2025

I’m going to let you in on a secret: within the next month, we’ll be sharing our Top 50 Underground Prog Albums of the Decade So Far 2020 – 2024, and you’d better believe that An Abstract Illusion will feature¹. After all, their sophomore Woe received a rare double review from Andy (busy with uni) and Zach (missing, presumed dead) in 2022, the duo bestowing upon it a 9 and 9.5, respectively. To boot, the band’s debut full-length, Illuminate the Path, made our Top 50 Underground Prog Albums of the 2010s, too. Suffice to say, the expectations for AAI’s third outing have been sky high across the progressive metal scene. Will The Sleeping City have listeners eargasming like a geyser ever erupting or is it as soporific as its title? 

The aim of the Swedes on The Sleeping City is to lean wholly into synth influences, such as Depeche Mode, My Bloody Valentine, Boards of Canada, and explicitly citing the score to Blade Runner (i.e. Vangelis), to create a death metal album that could soundtrack a dystopian sci-fi film. Synthwave and ambient influences were certainly present on Woe, but on The Sleeping City they’re amplified, successfully steeping the band’s trademark melody-forward take on progressive death metal in a neon-saturated sci-fi gloss, with a wall-of-sound production style reminiscent of Devin Townsend. 

“Blackmurmur” announces the new noise in style, with creeping synth arpeggios opening the album as the band warm up, leading us into our first main motif. Awash in synth, the track is far more densely-layered than their previous work, lighter in tone, and even more mood-driven than Woe. With a catchy, clean hook, some beautiful piano work, and several breaks for trippy synths between the soaring leads, vituperative harshes, plus synth solos you’d expect to hear on a Carpenter Brut album, The Sleeping City, then, marks a clear evolution. The opener seems to take what worked about “In the Heavens Above, You Will Become a Monster” (seemingly a crowd favourite) and capitalises on these various progressive elements, relegating the core death metal style to a secondary concern. 

And there’s plenty to like across The Sleeping City. Christian Berglönn and Robert Stenvall’s vocal performances deserve particular praise, with the clean vocals becoming a much stronger focus here and providing some gorgeous moments such as the hook on “Blackmurmur”, the choral break on “Like a Geyser Ever Erupting”², and some positively Solbergian (Leprous) highs on “Frost Flower”. There’s some impressive guitar work, including the solo on “No Dreams Beyond Empty Horizons” and the heavy riff that follows it, a very cool lick on “Like a Geyser Ever Erupting”, and an absolutely gorgeous solo on “The Sleeping City”. But it’s Stenvall’s keys that take centre stage throughout: a gorgeous piano break on the title track, and some impressive synth soloing on “Blackmurmur” and “Frost Flower”, as well as defining the overall ambience of the entire record. And don’t get me started on the Steven Wilson homages³. 

The Sleeping City, however, faces some issues. One is of motifs and mixing. Like finding sand after a beach trip, there’s synth arpeggios in every nook and cranny, and that would be fine if they weren’t so damned loud. For some reason, simplistic synth ascents and descents are turned up to eleven while more interesting guitar and synth lead work are pushed into the background, as though the album was mixed upside-down and all the numbers were read backwards. Mix problems rear their heads elsewhere: at the album’s most densely layered junctures, the low end can become a touch muddy with drums and rhythm guitar particularly affected. With this rhythmic bed dampened, compositions become unmoored, too floaty for their own good. Playing with so many added layers is obviously a challenge—Devin Townsend has self-produced his ridiculous wall-of-sound for decades and his mixes have always been variable. Still, while an admirable production job, elements unavoidably become buried on The Sleeping City, often by irksomely homogenous synth arpeggios.  

Compounding this problem is the compositions themselves. While it’s easy to pick out some great moments—and a few prominent songs—The Sleeping City suffers from an odd sameness throughout, a handful of distinct elements remixed a few different ways. By the time “Emmett” comes along, I’m half checked out. This particular block is one that many a band stumbles over: when your record is built on the valleys and peaks of build-ups and crescendos, everything begins to sound the same⁴. The Sleeping City duvets itself in synths and ambience that define the album much more readily than any other compositional decision does, once again, to the detriment of the rhythm section. The majesty of Woe was the versatility within an album that was, at its heart, one long song. Kauan-y post-rock vied against fully fledged death metal; choirs and Wilderun-esque symphonics were under assault by virtuosic technicality. Every song on The Sleeping City, no matter how promisingly it starts, seems to transform halfway into an attempt to recapture the epic magic of “In the Heavens Above, You Will Become a Monster”—those same grandiose melodies, synth motifs, and howls of anguish but combined in slightly different configurations. And as much as I adore that song, it defined Woe so brilliantly because it was an exception. It’s no coincidence that the most successful track on The Sleeping City is the eponymous closer, which sticks close to its central, guitar-led rhythm and consistently builds upon it, rather than recapitulating iterations of the same tired ideas or giving way to a bunch of floating synth ideas without a rhythmic foundation within which they can root themselves.  

Very few bands ever make a masterpiece, and An Abstract Illusion hit upon one on their second try. The follow-up to Woe was always going to struggle to reach the same giddy heights, and, let me be clear, The Sleeping City is by no means a bad album. To their credit, the ambitious Swedish group attempt something new here, and the underlying vision is palpable—there’s a version of this record that could easily be a second magnum opus for the band. Unfortunately, certain compositional and production choices do the totality of the vision a frustrating disservice, making The Sleeping City feel untethered from itself; a dream of perfection marred by having woken up leaving mere pieces of an elusive whole. Woe is me. 

Recommended tracks: The Sleeping City, Blackmurmur, Frost Flower
You may also like: Disillusion, Dessiderium, Iotunn
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

An Abstract Illusion is:
– Christian Berglönn – lead vocals
– Robert Stenvall – keyboards, vocals
– Karl Westerlund – guitars, bass
– Isak Nilsson — drums, background vocals
With guests:
– Lukas Backeström – lead vocals (track 1, 4), choir (track 2, 3)
– Jonathan Miranda-Figueroa – cello (track 3, 4, 7)
– Dawn Ye – violin (track 3, 7)
– Flavia Fontana – violin (track 4)
– Elsa Svensson – voice (track 6)

1.  I look forward to being harassed by readers in a month because this hasn’t actually been published. ↩︎
2. Between this and “And You Came With Searing Light” off the upcoming Psychonaut, 2025’s a banner year for ejaculatory song titles. ↩︎
3. Ok, you got me started: those rattling thrice-strummed chords that open “No Dreams Beyond Empty Horizons” are a strum short of “Time Flies” from The Incident (Porcupine Tree) while the mournful synth chords closing the track are akin to those that open “Veneno Para Las Hadas” from Wilson’s debut solo album Insurgentes. An Abstract Illusion have got form for nodding to Wilson, “Talvatis” from Illuminate the Path borrows the chord sequence from “Collapse the Light into Earth” from In Absentia. Cue the meme of me like Charlie Day in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia desperately trying to unravel the conspiracy. While I’m at it, that final piano etude on the title track has glorious “The Leper Affinity” (Opeth) energy and guess which popular English prog rock musician played that fucking piano part?! ↩︎
4. I’d like to term it The Wintersun Problem, but everyone would assume it was something to do with saunas. ↩︎