(((O))) Review: Arjen Lucassen’s Supersonic Revolution – Golden Age of Music

Arjen Anthony Lucassen has been a very, very busy man when it comes to projects alongside Ayreon. From Star One, The Gentle Storm, to the Gentle Machine, what will he think of next? Well, when it comes to the golden years of the glam rock scene in the 1970s, it can be quite an intriguing theme to follow. His next project entitled Supersonic Revolution, are a quintet that keeps the gauntlet up, revealing more and more delicious smells that are coming inside Arjen’s kitchen, waiting to devour.

Alongside Arjen who plays bass, the band considers keyboardist Joost van den Broek, guitarist Timo Somers, drummer Koen Herst, and lead vocalist Jaycee Cujipers. Now if you think that’s a line-up, oh, it’s more of a line-up, it’s a combination that’s locked-in very tight to keep these five men together as a team.

The genesis of the project came around when German Rock Magazine named Eclipsed, who have been around since 2000. What they wanted to do during that time frame is to do a compilation CD of cover songs. So when they asked Anthony, he contacted his favorite musicians in the Netherlands via WhatsApp. One of the songs they covered was ZZ Top’s ‘Heard It on the X’ from the Fandango album originally released in 1975.

Arjen is very much like a mad scientist, cooking up one experiment after another. Finding the right musicians at the right place, at the right time. And he wants his musicians to feel free, have an up-beat attitude, with an amount of carte blanche, and bringing positive vibes between each other.

He didn’t want to make the sound very ‘70s like, because the system has already been done with Rainbow, Zeppelin, Bowie, Deep Purple, and UFO. But for Arjen, it was a trip down memory lane for him to revisit those golden years by opening up a scrapbook, reflecting those incredible memories he had when he was a kid.

With Supersonic Revolution, they’re like a giant battering ram, waiting to burst the door down with a hardcore punch on their debut album, Golden Age of Music. And believe me, it’s a real corker that’s waiting to pop open the champagne bottle, and pour yourself a drink to celebrate.

Both ‘Golden Boy’ and ‘Odyssey’ feels like a continuation where ‘The Theory of Everything’ had left off as the prodigy parents have separated. After a huge amount of guilt by what happened to their son as the Father becomes insane with his own beliefs over what happened during the events of the story. Jaycee does sound like Toehider’s Michael Mills in the song as he is trapped in his own mental institute by pouring his heart and soul over the damages that have happened to his little boy.

It becomes a tidal-waving crash inside his head between blistering fret works, flourishing organ sounds, and militant drums, going at each other in the boxing ring to see if Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson, and Sugar Ray Leonard have one last match to see who will become the biggest champion of the world. Speaking of boxing, we delve deep into ‘The Glamattack’ where Supersonic honours the three legends as their music carries on in the next generation.

The four heroes from Alice Cooper, Marc Bolan of T. Rex, Sweet, and the Ziggy Stardust-era of David Bowie, is a legendary storytelling vibe. You can tell that they’re having a blast going through each of their description between Metal Guru, the Shock Rock prince, Ballroom Blizt’s, and the Starman’s various clothes he wore during the Stardust years.

And what a tribute it is before Joost lays down the hammer in the courthouse with his heavy organ attack going from a concerto to crying of the gods in the sky whilst Somers’ instrument goes from a Zappa-like midsection that speaks the ‘Peaches en Regalia’ sequence before laying down the Maiden tones to sudden unexpected twists. And ‘The Rise of the Starman’ is a reprise from ‘The Glamattack’ where the Astronauts go to Mars, and visited Ziggy in his spiritual guidance from the exhaustion he went through.

Jaycee’s Dio-like vocals are like a narrative texture detailing the tragic details before he rises up again, knowing that his fan base on planet Earth is still waiting for him to be The Man Who Fell to Earth. It has an epic atmosphere, and climatic midsections as he prepares to head back to the Blue planet once more as it ends it a segue to the drum intro of ‘Five Years’ that fades into the unknown.

The toccata-sque intro from ‘They Took Us By Storm’ brings the thunder down across the entire world, as it opens up the curtain to reveal a heavy onslaught that’s about to occur. Not only there’s the heavy bloodbath, but the way that the five piece know that they have an uphill battle to bring peace across the planet with music and love throughout the entire galaxy.

The last three bonus tracks are covers as they take in a Metallic twist with Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘Fantasy’ which sounds almost close to Joe “Bean” Esposito’s ‘You’re the Best’ while bringing a Rainbow-like touch to T. Rex’s ‘Children of the Revolution’ and Roger Glover’s The Butterfly Ball with a Beatle-sque sing-along to ‘Love is All’, followed by having a good-old Texas BBQ lunch with a huge crates of Beer that makes it spicy, hot and delicious, for ‘Heard it on the X’.

Supersonic Revolution is a band that I hope Arjen will continue with alongside with his other projects. It proves that he’s more than just Ayreon, more than Guilt Machine, and more than his collaboration with Anneke Van Giersbergen on The Gentle Storm. For his next chapter, he brings in the big guns and raises hell like there’s no tomorrow with his band of brothers.

And for the Golden Age of Music, it just got even bigger!