Stunning musicianship but at times hard to digest - A review of Augury's Illusive Golden Age

From a technical point of view, Augury is one of the best metal bands in the world. The four musicians are experts of their respective instruments. The complex drum patterns never cease to change, rolling thunderously at one moment, to evoke elaborate rhythms in the next moment, just to slow things down by creating mysterious anticipation. The bass guitar play is out of this world as the rhythms are highly complex since they aren't just backing the drums but often dueling the guitars with jazz and progressive rock stylistics. The guitar play is just as brilliant, evoking smooth progressive melodies in one moment to unchain rapid yet complex extreme metal patterns in the next. The cold and fierce riffs are just as brilliant as the otherworldly melodic guitar solos. The brilliant musicianship of the four musicians is kept together by a destructive and dystopian science-fiction atmosphere that evokes a multitude of thoughts, images and ideas which are supported by the imaginative cover artwork.

The extreme vocals meanders between shrieks, shouts and grunts and turn out being as diversified as the band's stunning technical musicianship. However, the vocals aren't even necessary and the band actually convinces most in its long instrumental passages and songs as the musicianship offers enough details to discover. The harsh vocals are often rather a distraction from than a clever contribution to the musicianship. A few mellower vocal lines here and there would have made the listening experience a little bit easier to digest as well.

This is in fact the only element one could criticize related to the brilliant musicianship. The songs are at times hard to digest because the band tries to put too many sounds, ideas and changes into one single song. This isn't always a matter of length. The closing ''Anchorite'' is by far the longest track with a running time above eight minutes but is the most organized, fluid and fleshed out track on the album. The brilliant instrumental ''Message Sonore'' is the shortest track with three and a half minutes but comes as a welcome break without being less creative than the other tunes. Overall, the record's second half is clearly superior to the first half. If the band had opted for a few more instrumental songs and longer tracks taking their time to unfold, the listening experience of this record could have been much better than it turned out to be.

Still, fans of progressive extreme metal and technical death metal must check this stunning output out and might even consider it an early highlight of the year. Almost nine years after its last studio record, Augury doesn't disappoint and seems to be back for good. Let's hope the next album comes around a little bit quicker than this one.

Final rating: 75%