Arjen Anthony Lucassen - Lost In the New Real (Album Review)

Arjen is one of the most active musician and composers that I know today, he's always working in different projects and with a lot of different people. Something that I admire from him is his ability for composing and writing  entire albums or better yet Rock Operas almost completely alone and in a really fast time. I don't know any other musician who's able to do that, he's usually the mastermind behind all of the projects that he is part of. He is not only the definition of an multi-instrumentalist artist but also an multi-dynamic creator. If his albums were films he would be  Director, Writer, Actor, Producer, Editor, etc, etc.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="270"] Saint Arjen, Omnipotent and omnipresent[/caption]

His most famous bands or projects are: Star One, Stream Of Passion and of course Ayreon.

Of course is impossible to talk about Arjen without talking about Ayreon which is his greatest project, Ayreon is basically a Meta Rock Opera, all of the albums in a way tell a single collective story and within it you can really find Arjen's true musical style and influences.

However it seems that Arjen has finally left Ayreon because a lot of people called his last Ayreon album 01011001 "more of the same" (which they aren't lying). So since then, he has decided to put Ayreon to sleep, beginning to work in other  projects like Star One: Victims Of the Modern Age.

And know we get his first solo album since 1994's Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy.

And what we have is Lost In The New Real 

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="504"] Just look at this cover![/caption]

And I'm going to be honest with you people, I don't know what to think about this album, I guess I'll find out at the end of this review.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="280"] Glad you're happy Arjen, because right here is when things start to get a little ugly[/caption]

The first thing that I have to say is that I like the music from Arjen but I'm not a fan on his, of all of his albums with Ayreon, the only one that I consider a true masterpiece (and I agree in calling it The Wall of our time) is The Human Equation, all the others are just OK for me. The thing that I hate about Arjen's albums is that they try to be extremely pretentious with the stories of the albums, I like the Sci-Fi atmosphere that he always manages to create but the stories are cliché ,completely exaggerated and really pretentious. But you maybe asking:

What does it matter if the story of a conceptual album is good or not?, it's a music album! not a film!

It matters because that pretentious story defines the overall structure of the album and in Ayreon's case, it makes the album tedious, with bad lyrics and extremely long. If you want to create a conceptual album that is going to last almost 2 hours you have to make an effort in writing a good clever story and not another cliché Sci-Fi flick.

I don't like Ayreon very much and I blame the stories for that, I mean just look at Victims Of the Modern Age, it wasn't a conceptual album is not a pretentious Sci-Fi Rock Opera, it's a solid progressive metal album that everybody loved.

But that's enough for rants, now let's get into this album, and the first question that I ask is: Does this new album has the same flaws as Ayreon's previous album? I don't know right now but let's find out.

So the first thing that I realize of this album is that it has 20 songs and a length of 1 hour and a half, not my favorite album structure but whatever, let's give it a chance.

Lost In The New Real is also a conceptual album, but it doesn't quite follow a clear story-line, something that it's a little bit confusing. The concept is that Mr. L (the famous hippie character from the Ayreon saga) it's resuscitated in a virtual futuristic dystopian reality and the album deals with Mr. L exploration of this reality or something like that.

And the first amazing thing of this album is that the narrator of the story is a character name Voight Kampff who is none other than Rutger Hauer. The narrations that he gives are perfect for the mood of the album and one of the albums highlights.

Now, I'm not going to make a song by song review of the album, the album has a lot of them .  But I'll talk about the album in general.

And what I want to say is that almost all of the songs of this album are OK, there's no song that I consider bad. All of them have the same arjen-folkish-opera-scifi style that you already know really well, and a most of them are short songs and have the same structure, all of them are fine but sadly that's it. The only one that is more than fine is the title track but that's it. There are no great or excellent songs, perhaps the worst song is Our Imperfect Race which seems that this is the point where the album starts to get tedious but it doesn't.

The two songs that I don't actually consider them great but I liked them really much are Parental Procreation Permit and E-Police.

But now let's talk about the other aspect of the album, the cover songs.

The cover songs are excellent :) he couldn't have chosen better song to cover, all of them are amazing. The only that it's a little weird is Pink Floyd's Welcome to the Machine, that guitar riff is just an intruder in the song.

Besides of that, Zeppelin's Battle of Evermore completely amazing, and I loved the ending.

Alan Parson Project's Some Other Time as excellent as the original.

Zappa's I'm the Slime weird, crazy and scary, how it should be.

And finally Blue Oyster Cult's Veteran of the Psychic Wars, PERFECT. Fuck Metallica, this is the greatest cover of this song ever, hell I think is ever better than the original!

So that's pretty much all that I have to say about the album. All the songs are OK and decent, thanks to the amazing covers the album doesn't get tedious as previous Ayreon albums did.

So I guess this is a good balanced album. OK songs and excellent covers. If you're not a fan of Arjen check it out, it's a nice introduction of his genre and if you're a fan, you are going to either love it or hate it.

Besides the title track, these are my two favorite songs of the album:

E-Police



Veteran Of The Psychic Wars



Thanks for reading :)