Album Review: AYREON Transitus (9/25)

 

Released by Music Theories Recordings on September 25th, 2020

Quick Background

Ayreon, the brainchild of Dutch prog master Arjen Lucassen, was born two decades ago Arjen was suddenly and inexplicably overwhelmed by a compulsion to create rock-operas. Those rock-operas contain complex storylines and feature a host of characters, usually with each one being represented by a unique vocalist. There's usually a high emphasis on female singers. Lucassen writes the music and the lyrics, sings and plays most of the instruments on all of the Ayreon albums, alongside guest musicians. The artists on an Ayreon album are all carefully hand-picked by Arjen to be the perfect musical fit for the role he has in mind. Musically, Ayreon albums combine traditional rock instruments with digital synths and folk instruments. The Final Experiment is the debut studio album released in 1995. Since then 8 other albums were released including the 2017's The Source which was one of the top 3 albums of that year. So I do like this project a lot.

Transitus 

And now 2020 we get the new effort named Transitus with 22 songs (9 or 14 on Spotify CD1 and 13 CD2). The 10th studio album runs for 80 minutes. According to Arjen the lyrical content is inspired by supernatural movies such as The Others, The Changeling and Ghost. It focuses on a new story fusing a sci-fi theme with a gothic ghost story, partially set in the 19th century starring lead characters Abby and Daniel. In terms of musicians the album features Tommy Karevik (Kamelot) as Daniel and Cammie Gilbert (Oceans of Slumber) as Abby. The cast also features Simone Simons (Epica), Dee Snider (Twisted Sister), Joe Satriani, Marty Friedman, Johanne James (Threshold), Noa Gruman (Scardust), Marcela Bovio (MaYan), Caroline Westendorp (The Charm The Fury), Paul Manzi (Arena), Micheal Mills (Toehider) and Amanda Somerville (Avantasia, Trillium) amongst many others. 

Musically the album was inspired by the soundtrack composers John Carpenter (Halloween), Ennio Morricone (Once upon a Time in the West) and Jerry Goldsmith (Omen). I personally think that the music on the album is typical Ayreon and reminds me of Nightwish and Kamelot but specially this time it brings me back to Rick Wakeman's Journey to the Centre of the Earth. That's due to the heavy emphasis on keyboards but most notably because of the constant narrations. Transitus is narrated by one of the most iconic and recognizable voices in sci-fi history, most known from his eight-year stint as Doctor Who, Tom Baker. The usual drummer partner Ed Warby is not on this album and the chops were done by Juan van Emmerloot. Joost van den Broek on piano, electric piano, and electric organ is one of the musical foundations on the album.

Tom Baker sounds great on all his narrations. It really brings the theatrical feel to the album. The singer cast is not as jaw dropping as in some previous Arjen's works, but it is quite OK.  Tommy Karevik does a good job as the main character but I don't think it was his best performance. He is probably the singer to be heard the most here and therefore it reminds me of Kamelot at several moments, take "Daniel's Descent Into Transitus" for example, it's almost like a dark Kamelot song. As he did with Avantasia, Dee Snider delivered the goods and his song "Get Out! Now!" is one of the highlights on the album. Some other cool things, the Pink Floydian moments on "Fatum Horrificum" and "Two Worlds Now One". "Talk Of The Town" and "Hopelessly Slipping Away" bring on the folk influences and are very Nightwish-like. I also found the Marty Friedman's solo on "Message From Beyond" is pretty cool. Overall, there's a lot going on throughout the 80 minutes with some great moments and songs.

The Picky Guy

But, the album is too long with an extended number of narrations with some awkward lyrics at times. In Nightfall in Middle-Earth album, Blind Guardian opted to separate the narrations from the actual songs in different tracks. It's not the case here, so you can't easily skip the narrations. While it's fun to listen to all the 80 minutes with all of it a couple of times as full album and story but after several listens it gets very tiring for me. It's borderline theater play and I am not a big theater fan. And I was disappointed with my guitar hero's solo. Not the best Satriani solo.

Wrap Up Opinion 

Transitus is the most cinematic and outrageous album by Ayreon. For diehard fans, I think Transitus  will work and be well received. But for new comers there are better albums to choose from. I' giving it 77/100 so just enough to be considered a good album. It's certainly worth a try.

 SCORE: 77/100

Genre: Progressive Rock

Released by Music Theories Recordings on September 25th, 2020

Rating System*
99 - 100 Perfect
94 - 98 Excellent
87 - 93 Great
82 - 86 Very Good
77 - 81 Good
66 - 76 Mixed
58 - 65 Bad

* slightly adapted on May 24th, 2020 due to statistical review
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