Arjen Anthony Lucassen – Songs No One Will Hear

Aren’t we tired of Arjen Anthony Lucassen and his endless array of projects by now? Not at all, so let’s dive into his fantastic new solo album.

In the past years, I have come to the conclusion that Arjen Anthony Lucassen does not know the meaning of the word ‘sleep.’ In the past two years alone, he has written, recorded and released a staggering five albums, including the one reviewed right here. In 2023, he released both Golden Age of Music with his Supersonic Revolution project, as well as the massive Star One juggernaut Revel in Time. 2024 saw the release of the Simone Simons solo album Vermillion, which he wrote, played on and produced. We were also treated to the Plan Nine album The Long Lost Songs, containing old, re-recorded and partly re-written material with Robert Soeterboek. This year, there’s the new solo album Songs No One Will Hear and the re-release of his first one from 1993, Pools of Sorrrow ~ Waves of Joy, which also contains newly recorded versions of a number of its original songs. And then I’m not even counting remasters of older albums and live records. Even if Lucassen knows what sleep is, he wouldn’t have the time to do so.

Considering the regularity of new releases and the amount of songs, seeing most of them are double albums by default, you’d expect the quality to drop somewhere along the line. So far, however, the only disappointment in Lucassen’s vast and varied discography was 2020’s Transitus, released under the Ayreon moniker. And even that was an album that any other artist would probably have been proud of. That being said, I’ve often accused Lucassen’s material of being same-y. There are a lot of motifs, riffs and soundscapes that end op sounding the same. On the other hand: you can call that a style. The same goes for the recurring guest musicians; if it’s not broken, don’t fix it.

Songs No One Will Hear is Arjen’s third proper solo album. To this year, I had never heard his first one, which was released two years before the first Ayreon album and understandably sounds a bit rough now. I did love his second one, Lost in the New Real, which saw the light of day back in 2012. Where Ayreon, and to an extent Star One, can feel massive and overwrought, this was an album with a much smaller scale, with just Arjen on lead vocals and not much extra fluff. Songs No One Will Hear is much of the same and it’s a delight.

Built around the premise of an asteroid hurtling toward Earth and the world coming to an end in five months time, it basically asks the question: what would you do with the time you have left? It’s an interesting theme to build upon lyrically, and Lucassen has some great fun with it on songs like Shaggaton, where he suggests just throwing a massive orgy, and Dr. Slumber’s Blue Bus, where we gather round on “Sanctuary Island” to see the asteroid coming to smash down in the final moments. Both songs are light-hearted and just downright fun, with especially the latter sporting a phenomenal chorus that you will not get out of your head any day soon.

But there are also more poignant moments, like We’ll Never Know, a song about a couple expecting a baby girl that will never be born. What would she have been like? We’ll never know indeed. Or Just Not Today, where the character ruminates on the lives we’ve led and if, in the end, anything we did was even worth a damn. Things come to a long and explosive ending on Our Final Song, where the Great Big Rock crashes into earth and ends all life as we know it.

Musically, everyone who knows Arjen Lucassen’s work will know what to expect. There are moments of metallic madness but it’s always being delivered with a proggy panache and, like on Lost in the New Real, a sixties and seventies, Beatles-esque flair. Backed by Irene Jansen and, on the grand finale, Ayreon veteran Robert Soeterboek, it’s a forty-six minute, eight songs counting album that feels small in scope. Floor Jansen absolutely shines on We’ll Never Know, an emotional song cleverly hidden between the two most fun, upbeat tracks on the album. In between songs, Mike Mills hosts a fictional podcast where he keeps us up to date on the apocalyptic proceedings, whilst Peter Daltrey (of Kaleidoscope and Fairfield Parlour fame) provides narration on the closing track. Some of the songs on here are the best and most inspired that Lucassen has written in years, with Dr. Slumber’s Blue Bus definitely taking the cake as a career highlight, and that’s saying something.

Fans of the man’s work will already have bought Songs No One Will Hear and people who have heard his work before and don’t own even one album will probably not be enticed to do so this time, so I’ve basically written this entire word salad for no one at all. That being said, this is a spectacularly good album that absolutely flies by with nary a dull moment on it. And if I had to choose between the next album being an Ayreon release, a Star One record or another solo album, I’d definitely argue for it to be the latter. Absolutely essential stuff.

Label: InsideOut Music

Buy it here: https://www.arjenlucassen.com/

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