(We present DGR‘s review of the debut album by the Spanish band Dissocia, released last spring by Willowtip Records.)
Dissocia’s To Lift The Veil is a release that has been hanging around the NCS collective office for a while. To Lift The Veil was released in March of this year and we’re only just now getting around to a full-album deep dive.
Yes, this is one of those that we refuse to let go of for a few reasons. The compulsion to have something to say even though it’s been out for a while often wins over our feeble minds in that case, and as you can see here, we are once again battered and bruised by our own brain chemicals.
Not that we haven’t had anything to say in regard to this project before though; we were lucky enough to run a premiere of the song “Samsara” back in February when 2025’s overall musical arc was still a nebulous ball of chaos that had yet to take shape. But in order to understand all of this we need to run backward even further than just this introductory bit because it is likely that some of you may not be aware of what Dissocia and their debut album are just yet.
To Lift The Veil is, as mentioned before, Dissocia’s first album. Dissocia are a union of two musicians from projects that will likely be very familiar to followers of the site. The main core of the band is multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Daniel R. Flys, whom you might recognize from being part of the lineups of both Eternal Storm and Persefone. Dissocia is largely his, playing every instrument save for two and writing the majority of the album.
Calling upon one Paul R. Flys for help with violin layers on certain songs, the only other thing he did not play for the core of Dissocia’s sound was the drums, which were handled by Gabriel Valcázar, whom again you might recognize as the gentleman currently sitting behind the kit for the bands Wormed and the current lineup of long-running death metal stalwarts Cancer.
Admittedly, with a wild spread of a resume across two musicians like that, it might be hard to take an initial guess at what Dissocia are creating here. They lean more toward the former musician’s projects than the latter; To Lift The Veil is a progressive metal opus that extends its reach far, bringing in elements not only of melodeath but also of straight-on progressive metal, as well as gleefully grabbing from both the modern slate of current metal trends as well as some classics. They even get some metalcore-esque fried out vocals in a few moments on one song.
On their debut album Dissocia are a synthesis of many, many different sounds to create something that has a dreamlike quality to it – even though lyrically they stand in contrast as they delve deep into the inner turmoils, philosophical musings, and extroverted wanderings of their imagined protagonist.
To Lift The Veil is a seven-song effort that clocks in at around forty-one minutes. Of those seven songs, six of them sail well over the five-minute mark and only one stays at a compact two-minutes-and-fifty-seconds. To Lift The Veil could then be treated as a series of both intense and meditative journeys, often within the same song at times.
The opening two songs, “Existentialist” and “He Who Dwells”, are centered on a guitar melody that flutters about like a hummingbird on speed, with a light echo effect that means it is constantly interweaving its way throughout both songs. Each of the two takes its five minutes and leaps from a series of dynamic peaks that change musically with the topology of the musical mountains and valleys Dissocia are exploring at that moment. Thus, we find ourselves like the world’s stuffiest sommeliers, finding notes of so many different things in any particular sip of To Lift The Veil’s vintage.
Within those first two songs you can hear the protective spirit of Persefone‘s quieter prog-metal explorations just as much as you’ll note the base intensity of a straightforward melodic death metal one-two. Dissocia is a creation of many different blends and the first two songs alone can have you feeling as if you are the figure portrayed on the cover art of To Lift The Veil.
“Samsara” soon following plays more around the edges of tech-death than you’d expect, with a synth line that could’ve fallen out of a Traced In Air-era Cynic rehearsal session before heading in an unexpected chunkier direction for its main guitar part. The guitar riff stutters, stops, starts, and grooves with a frequency that is as agile as a rehearsed dancer. Not to mention the continued variety of vocal assaults.
Three songs in and it becomes clear Dissocia is a huge opportunity for these two musicians to spread their artistic wings wide, and many of those impressions come from the first two minutes before a clean-sung chorus witnesses Daniel moving between three different screaming styles in mere seconds. “Samsara” is a song that makes time vanish faster than you’d imagine the weightier six-plus minutes it asks for would suggest. We premiered this particular musical adventure here if you want a further exploration of just this one song.
From one end of the album to the other one can’t help but be fascinated by the immense construction of To Lift The Veil on some of its songs. There are layers upon layers of ideas here and the last few songs of this album may share a common melodic core but are distant travels all their own.
“Evasion” is the previously mentioned short song, one that hovers between introductory segue after the album’s eight-minute monolith “The Lucifer Effect” and a ballad all on its own. It is built around a huge dynamic swell and one sung segment at the end which then gives way to To Lift The Veil’s closing exploration “Out Of Slumber”. It says something for the ideas that are in play here when two of your longest songs lay in the back third of the disc. The movements taking place within each song are varied and drift from both dreamlike slumber to intensely heavy.
There’s a little bit of comfort zone and familiarity as you reach the end points of this album but the interesting part of “Out Of Slumber” is how it takes all of the varying ideas that’ve been presented and blends them together into one final overall statement. “Out Of Slumber” is not a song that the listener is being led toward but it is the one that makes the most sense to close out To Lift The Veil. It is the “everything and the kitchen sink” track after a whole album that has already tried to throw a whole house of progressive metal ideas at you. Even then it still surprises with works like the vocal approach that appears halfway into the song or the way the song itself seems to collapse in its final moments.
Yes, it has been a tremendously long time – by internet standards – since To Lift The Veil saw release but this is one of those that deserved a deeper dive because it is highly likely going to resurface come year-end time. It plays upon so many of the elements that we enjoy in heavy metal around here and the stretch to try and take this music further than just being an excellent collective of songs is as interesting as the music itself.
The Dissocia crew make a potent argument for recognition with To Lift The Veil. Their multi-dimensional approach is as cinematic and dynamic as it comes, with moments that are stunningly heavy and moments that are equally beautiful. Dissocia are working in service of a much larger metaphysical concept on To Lift The Veil but even then have crafted seven songs that are as articulate and intricate as they come. To Lift The Veil is an album that deserves as much attention as it can possibly grab.
ACQUIRE:
via Willowtip ► https://bit.ly/veil-willowtip
via Bandcamp ► https://bit.ly/veil-bandcamp
DISSOCIA:
https://dissociaofficial.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/dissociaofficial
https://www.instagram.com/dissociaofficial