Actual Fantasy
Jurriaan Hage
01-01-1997
Summary of history:
Ayreon by Arjen Anthony Lucassen was a concept album dealing with time, King Arthur and Science Fiction. Surprisingly maybe the album sold quite well, and here there's an album by the "band" Ayreon. Now, again a concept album, but seemingly a looser one than Ayreon, about Fantasy.
The album:
As is his wont, the album starts with a introduction: a little girl, oops sorry, girl, saying "actual fantasy" and a nice synth intro with a singer/speaker telling me to sit back and relax.
The album really starts with the Abbey of Synn, which starts out with spooky voices in a church. The track itself is rather moody and dark in the beginning. Also rather threatening when we are waiting for the violent guitars that release us only after three minutes. The middle part of the track can best be described as bombastic guitar rock, of the better kind, because the song sticks in your head and has some very good melodies. Then we get the quieter part again, after which the guitar returns and a keyboard solo is thrown in.
The next track is the "single". Again, the style is progressive hard rock, not so technical as for instance Dream Theater, but very melodic and with enough variation to please a progressive rock lover. The keyboard solo by Cleem Determeijer is very ELPish.
Computer Eyes reminds me of the atmospheric Pink Floyd (maybe some One of these days, but friendlier). The subject of the track is rather nice, about a person or being locked inside a computer wondering what he actually is. Again good melodies with, again, a good keyboard solo by Determeijer.
The vocals on Beyond the last horizon are very monotonic, unless Reekers sings the very melodic chorus, which reminds me a bit of ELO. Against the background of a battlefield, the song tells of a man mortally wounded and his struggle to stay on the right side of life.
Far side of the world is rather like the previous track, but with a lot of bleeping and teetering keyboards. If you have both Live at the Target of Twelfth Night and this album, you might want to compare the intro to this track to that album. As often happens on this album, the vocals are vocoded and this also introduces a certain kind of variation, using this to make it seem apparent that different characters sing parts of the same song.
The closing track is a ballad, which in the chorus is a little too mellow for my tastes. The style, with violin and clavicle is rather medieval, but also reminds me of ELO, probably because of the vocals.
The album also contains a bonus track with a video clip of The stranger from within. It played immediately under Windows NT, although it has no sound. I'm not sure if there should have been, but it might easily have been my set-up.
The packaging like the whole of the CD is professional and well done.
Conclusion:
Modern, well-executed and bombastic heavy melodic progressive. A lot of room for both synthesizers and guitars and also well balanced. The vocals are very good and often digitally altered. Maybe not progressive enough for some, but the many keyboard solo's, the fine melodies and ditto execution certainly make it worth a try, especially if you like Queensryche and Dream Theater, but even if you like a heavier version of ELO. In my opinion, this album surpasses The Final Experiment.