Love Queen? Rush? Dio? How about if you crammed them all together into one big, fleshy prog-rock meatloaf, seasoned with a lack of restraint that makes Devin Townshend look like John Denver? If that sounds palatable, then Twisted Illusion could be right up your street.
It’s all the vision of frontman Matt Jones (the rest of the lineup is an ever-shifting enigma), who wails with wild abandon over sprawling prog epics that, in the case of the title track, spill over the 28-minute mark. You can’t knock the guy’s ambition, but there are moments, such as at the end of World’s Apart, when it genuinely sounds like four different songs are playing at once – a little self editing could have worked wonders. And of course it’s a double album, in fitting with the rest of the ‘go big or go home’ mentality. And yet, despite the sometimes suffocating deluge of ideas, there’s something eccentrically loveable about the sheer audacity of it all.
