I discovered ILLUMISHADE well after their debut album, ECLYPTIC: Wake of Shadows, dropped last year (hence why this post is so dang late). All the other music reviewers I’ve seen either get advance copies, or binge through their topics on repeat within the week they come out in order to get a professional review out A.S.A.P. I felt like that if I didn’t meet that window, I couldn’t help the band get noticed at all. To be honest, I’m not the kind of blogger who would help get a band noticed. But since most good metal bloggers seem to exclusively cover death and black metal, there’s a chance that ILLUMISHADE was overlooked. Fortunately, since I’m late for this, I’ve had time to listen to the album multiple times. And since then, I’ve actually grown to like ILLUMISHADE a lot more than my initial listen-through. There’s benefits to being a year late for this kind of thing!
ILLUMISHADE does not have a Wikipedia page, so… er… yeah, I know next to crap about them. All I know is that they’re a relatively new metal band from Switzerland. Similar to Gloryhammer and Dark Sarah, they create a fictional universe and lore that serve as the basis for their lyrical themes. Despite being so new to the scene, their marketing is already much more ambitious than the aforementioned bands. They have Tribe Tuesdays and, like, you can join a Tribe and it’s… a lot, especially for this early in their career. At the very least, similar to Gloryhammer specifically, each and every member has a stage name to make it easier to identify them, which mitigates the issue of the vocalist taking the face of the band. Most notably, their Guardian is Fabienne Erni from the death-folk-metal band Eluveitie.
I usually don’t like photos of the artist as the album cover art, but at least ILLUMISHADE goes for some style points. They look cool standing together like a group, and the sky background is kinda pretty. It’s way better than pop artists who just have a normal photo of their face as the cover.
ILLUMISHADE is about as opposite of Eluveitie as it gets. Well, not that I’ve listened to them, since it’s death metal. But considering that ILLUMISHADE has a very poppy, clean, synth-heavy musical style, I’m going to make a ballpark guess that it’s at least a little bit different from Eluveitie. The only growls appear in the form of a guest vocalist on the third track, ‘Tales of Time’. If you’re an Eluveitie fan, then ILLUMISHADE could very well disappoint.
If you don’t like death metal, or are eclectic enough to like more than just death metal, let’s continue on with the review.
ILLUMISHADE’s ambitions show not only on their Facebook, but also in the album itself. This. Thing. Is. Ballsy. Half of the thing is instrumentals, and every song is wildly different in tone. The aforementioned ‘Tales of Time’ is super happy, but that’s pretty much the only happy song on here. Ballads like ‘What Have I Become’ are more existential, and ‘Muse of Unknown Forces’ sounds like a Disney villain song. All of these are handled excellently by Erni’s Fabienne-lous (bad pun) singing voice. Like I said in my Top Five Song Covers, she’s about as good as Idina Menzel.
As great as the album is, it’s not perfect. In fact, I feel like it’s too ambitious. First off, none of the instrumentals felt relevant to the story. I use the word “felt” because, to be honest, I have no idea what the story even was. This was my biggest problem with ECLYPTIC. Lemme start a new paragraph to elaborate.
Take this criticism with a grain of salt, for I am BAD with concept albums of any kind. Operation: Mindcrime by Queensrÿche is one of my favorite concept albums of all time, yet years after listening to its tracks over and over again, I STILL don’t know what happened. But compared to other concept albums, ECLYPTIC feels like the worst offender with story cohesion. I usually have a vague idea of what a concept album is about, but I got nothing here. Do I have to participate in their Facebook doo-hickeys to get more of the story? That’s kind of an iffy gimmick, since anyone late to the party (like myself) would not have any idea what to do.
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Final Verdict: 8.5/10
ILLUMISHADE has potential to be a really, really good band. But for now, they only have this album, a cover of ‘Into the Unknown’ from Frozen 2, and a 2021 single titled ‘The Endless Vow’. If you wanna invest in something early, then this band’s a good choice.
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