STAR ONE — Revel In Time (review)

Album · 2022 · Progressive Metal

4.5/5 · 2022-02-18
lukretion

Arjen Anthony Lucassen did it again. With Revel in Time, his third full-length release under the banner Star One, he managed to write yet another progressive metal masterpiece. Packed with an astonishing list of elite guest musicians and bursting with one of the most diverse, fun and energetic tracklists ever put together by the Dutch maestro, Revel in Time is a tremendous album that, come December, will no doubt find its place at the top of many Album of the Year lists.

Arjen’s fame is well established by now. With its main project Ayreon, the Dutchman has developed a strong reputation as one of the most accomplished prog metal composers of our times, as well as uncontested master of rock/metal operas. Launched in 2002, Star One was born as a side-project where Arjen could explore the more metallic side of his music. For those who are most familiar with the recent Ayreon’s albums, this may sound odd given that metal is a prominent ingredient of many of those records. But back in early 2000s Ayreon was still largely a progressive rock affair, and with Star One Arjen was trying something different relative to his mainband, focusing on heavier and leaner songs, that did not form part of a larger-scale narrative and were based on the interplay between a restricted number of singers rather than the usual army of guest singers one can find on Ayreon’s albums. Thus, the two previous Star One albums, 2002’s Space Metal and 2010’s Victims of the Modern Age, both featured the same four singers (Russel Allen, Damian Wilson, Floor Jansen and Dan Swanö) and were comprised of briefer, self-contained musical pieces that had the only common characteristic of being inspired by sci-fi cinematography (films about space in the case of Space Metal, dystopian movies in Victims of the Modern Age).

Revel in Time follows in the footsteps of the previous Star One albums, but it also marks a departure from some of the guidelines that had driven the project so far. The new record continues the theme of movie-inspired music, this time drawing from films centred on the theme of time manipulation (from Back to the Future to Groundhog Day). Other than this common conceptual thread, the songs are pretty much standalone pieces, each focused on the narrative of its respective movie. Musically, we are in classic metal / hard rock territory, albeit with plenty of progressive undercurrents (much more so than the previous two Star One albums, to the point that Revel in Time actually feels like a hybrid between Star One and Ayreon). The songs are strongly riff-based and feature a fat guitar sound and a powerful, no-frills rhythmic backbone courtesy of Arjen’s long-time partner in crime, drum maestro Ed Warby. The keyboards are used prominently too, albeit mostly to provide spacey futuristic soundscapes or lush symphonic arrangements, rather than as lead instrument.

Differently from the previous Star One albums, Revel in Time features a large number of singers, each appearing on one of the 11 tracks of the album. This was partly due to the COVID-19 international travel restrictions that prevented Arjen from flying the singers over to his own studio where they would have recorded their interactive parts as usual. Nevertheless, the four regular Star One singers, Russel Allen, Damian Wilson, Floor Jansen and Dan Swanö, are all present on the record, with one song each. Next to them, we have an unbelievable list of guest vocalists, including Roy Khan (Conception, ex-Kamelot), Brittney Hayes (Unleash the Archers), Joe Lynn Turner (ex-Rainbow, ex-Deep Purple, ex-Malmsteen), Jeff Scott Soto (Sons of Apollo, ex-Malmsteen), Brandon Yeagley (Crobot), Ross Jennings (Haken), John Cuijpers (Praying Mantis), and Michael Mills (Toehider). As if this wasn’t impressive enough, Arjen also managed to gather a stellar cast of instrumentalists who provide jaw-dropping guitar and keyboard solos throughout the album, from Jens Johansson (Stratovarius) over to Michael Romeo (Symphony X), Timo Somers (ex-Delain), Bumblefoot (Sons of Apollo, ex- Guns N' Roses), Adrian Vandenberg (ex-Whitesnake), and no other than his guitar majesty Steve Vai. And if this still does not convey the bonkers scale of the project, just know that the album comes with a second CD containing alternative versions of all 11 songs, each sung by a different vocalist!

As you go through the list of incredible musicians featuring on the album, two things should become clear. First, the musicianship is incredible. Arjen has a strong reputation for writing songs that bring the best out of his guest musicians, and the 11 tracks of this record could not confirm this more clearly. The performances are astonishing, from the first to the last note. Second, the heterogeneous cast of performers means that the album accommodates a very diverse range of styles, from hard rock (“Back from the Past”, “Revel in Time”, “The Year of '41”), to Rainbowesque classic metal (“28 Days”, “Beyond the Edge of It All”, “Lost Children of the Universe”), to full-on power metal (“Fate of Man”), to symphonic metal (“A Hand on the Clock”), to more out-there progressive rock (“Prescient”, “Today Is Yesterday”). This diversity is undoubtedly the main strength of the album, which feels fresh, fun and dynamic, providing a stark contrast especially with previous Star One record, the monolithic and monotonous Victims of the Modern Age. Amazingly, despite its heterogeneity, Revel in Time also feels very cohesive, thanks to the consistent sound production and Arjen’s unique songwriting style that ties together all the different influences into a harmonious musical almanac.

The album offers highlight after highlight. Each song features amazing hooks, with melodies that get instantly stuck in your brain and burrow there for days. At the same time, there is plenty of musical depth too, with structures that often depart from the simple verse/chorus repetition and experiment with complex, multi-part vocal harmonies (backing singers Marcela Bovio, Irene Jansen and Will Shaw deserve huge praise here), or venture in interesting detours, like the operatic choral bombast of the epic “Lost Children of the Universe”, arguably the best song of the album. In this way, the record strikes the perfect balance between immediacy and subtlety, delivering payoffs that are both instant and gradual. Most of all, though, Revel in Time is a thoroughly enjoyable and fun album to listen to: free from the constraints of the rock opera format, where each song must play its part in the overall aesthetic of the concept, Revel in Time’s 11 songs seem instead to have been written as each and every one of them was meant to be the climactic point of the album. It’s a constant deluge of great musical ideas that simply floors the listener time and time again.

It is really hard to find something to criticize here. One might be tempted to say that Revel in Time does not bring much new to the already stellar catalogue of Ayreon / Star One. But then I listen to the Devin Townsend-esque extravaganza of “Today Is Yesterday”, the 70s hardrock echoes of “Revel in Time”, and the power metal assault of “Fate of Man”, and I cannot help but feel that there is a boldness here, an audacity to embrace a whole universe of heavy metal music that makes this album very special and unique, even when compared to Arjen’s impressive standards. Revel in Time is without doubt the best Star One release so far, and also one of the most convincing pieces of work written by Arjen across all his projects. If you are a fan of bombastic, melodic progressive metal, you simply cannot miss this album.

[Originally written for The Metal Observer]