Biography

German progressive metal band Disillusion slowly grew from thrashy roots to a sound that was an avant-garde take on melodic death metal, maturing slowly as they experimented on sporadically released albums. Disillusion embraces a wide variety of unlikely combinations of sound and style, bringing together ambient folk, euphoric electronics, pummeling metal intensity, and more on albums like 2022's Ayam. Formed in Leipzig, Germany, in 1994, Disillusion started out playing standard death/thrash metal and issuing several demos before the decade ran out. The band went their separate ways by 1998, when none of their recordings had attracted any record label interest. However, the core duo of vocalist/guitarist Vurtox (real name Andy Schmidt) and drummer Alex Motz remained in touch and were soon working together again, so that by the time they'd revived Disillusion with 2001's Three Neuron Kings EP (also featuring guitarist Rajk Barthel), progressive tendencies had taken hold of their songwriting in a prominent way. For their first proper album, 2004's Back to Times of Splendor, on Metal Blade, Vurtox, Barthel, and new drummer Jens Maluschka were taking even more liberties with their metallic foundations and, come 2006's sophomore Gloria, the presence of electronic, ambient, classical, and alternative rock elements had rendered their music quite impossible to pigeonhole. The band would experience line-up changes and periods of dormancy throughout the 2010s and beyond, but released a third a album, The Liberation, in 2017, followed in 2022 by their fourth album, Ayam. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia, Rovi