Who’s your favourite time traveller? Whoever it is, you’ll surely know about The Doctor’s TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimensions In Space). Now, Dutch prog-meister Arjen Lucassen, he of Ayreon, Star One, and Guilt Machine, takes us back to the 1970s for some Tremendous Awesome Rock Delivering Intense Sensations! Well, sort of. 

 

Golden Age Of Music (Music Theories Recording/Mascot Label Group) is a bit cheesy, more than a bit “on the nose”, and quite often qualifies as simplistic, unchallenging Euro rock. But this tribute to times past seems entirely heartfelt, and is all good, clean fun. Who’s to say it’s not the way to go?

 

A song called ‘The Glamattack’ spells out the dramatic crux, contrasting music idols such as David Bowie and Alice Cooper with a sad, loner fan, dreaming of his chance in the limelight: “I put my headphones on and dream away the days, One day it’s me up there shining on that stage.” You never know, man – stranger things have happened!

 

There’s more Bowie-inflected stuff with ‘The Rise Of The Starman’, while ‘Burn It Down’ is a clear homage to Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke On The Water’. 

 

The nods to the “golden age” include mentions of landmark albums like Rainbow Rising, and bands from Pink Floyd to Thin Lizzy (“The Boys Are Back In Town!”). It all starts to sound like an extended version of Europe’s 2015 pure banger, Days Of Rock ’N’ Roll: “Somebody told us to shake and shiver, He left the building not long ago.” But the sometimes cryptic/sometimes obvious namedropping references are not restricted to music – there’s also fashion (bell bottoms, tie-dye shirts, platform heels), and unforgettable icons including Farrah Fawcett and Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach). But talk of “revolution” and “innovation” way back then rings a tad hollow given the lack of genuine artistic and/or creative innovation on this new album – yes, that’s the nature of the beast, retrospectively turning the focus back to “one hell of a time”, but more can still be done today.

 

In 2022, … And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead’s Conrad Keely wrote about such a golden age, of the records he loved by Led Zep, Floyd, and Rush. And Trail Of Dead delivered an epic and ambitious opus – XI: Bleed Here Now – that revered that golden age while still offering its own great depth and variety, music that was mythic, elegiac, but still contemporary. Two very different bands, and two very different approaches, of course.

 

 

While Lucassen’s Supersonic Revolution album might be primarily straight-ahead, with little depth or poetry, and even less nuance, it is very well played and very nicely sung, with superior and commanding vocals from Jaycee Cuijpers. 

 

The appeal is not strictly stuck in the past, as this music will surely satisfy modern-day fans of soft prog and/or harder rock, the likes of Styx, Kansas or even Dream Theater. Other tracks touch on disparate subjects, songs like ‘Golden Boy’ (a tribute to “nerd” Steven Spielberg and his movies, including Duel, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, and Jaws. They’re gonna need a bigger concept!). ‘Came To Mock, Stayed To Rock’ involves a father/son debate concerning metal’s superiority over other musical forms (ABBA, for instance, and opera) that results in a concession that there is, in fact, more to life than rock! I’ll let you be the judge of that, son …

 

A quartet of bonus tracks finds Arjen & Co tackling classics from the period in question, T-Rex’s ‘Children of the Revolution’ (the best song on the entire album, by far), ZZ Top’s ‘Heard It On The X’ (another tribute to music of the past), Earth Wind And Fire’s ‘Fantasy’ (a chuggy, heavy version that surprisingly works) and Roger Glover’s ‘Love Is All’ (a strong, all-inclusive finish).

 

For this Supersonic Revolution album, multi-instrumentalist Lucassen covers bass, as well as writing, recording, engineering, producing and mixing duties, with Timo Somers on guitar, Joost van den Broek to the fore on keyboards (Jon Lord/Tony Carey/Don Airey-style), and Koen Herfst impressing throughout on drums.

 

Who? Arjen Lucassen’s Supersonic Revolution. What? 1970s-era rock nostalgia. Where? In your earholes. When? As of now. Why? Just because it’s fun!

 

Buy the album here:

https://lnk.to/SupersonicRevolution

 

7 / 10

CALLUM REID