The Upcoming Albums Thread

Mikael Akerfeldt is actually growling again, and it still sounds as great as ever!

Yeah, I'm not really sure what they're trying to do with this album: It just sounds like a bunch of random songs that belong on different albums, with no coherency whatsoever, at least so far. I do like all the singles, though, so maybe the full album will make more sense, lol

This is probably my least favourite so far, but Simone's solo album is shaping up to be a very eclectic affair: all three songs dropped so far are very different and if you thought having Mark Jansen on this track would make it sound like Epica, you'd be very wrong. Some strong industrial vibes here.

They've done a music video for The Quest for Tanelorn:

And I'm not too impressed. I mean it's Blind Guardian so it sounds good but it doesn't sound as good as the original does. It feels more polished and slick but this actually makes the song lose something and I expect that's going to be true of the entire release if this is anything to judge by. 

I listened Human. :||: Nature. again and it looks like for some odd reason I gave it four stars off my one listen years ago but that's had to be halved after the relisten. Even 2 still seems generous to be honest. I spent the whole thing wondering what Tuomas was thinking. 

To be honest with you, I thought Arjen's last album as Supersonic Revolution felt a bit too much by the numbers and apart from some seventies hard rock nods felt very much like an Ayreon album with one singer. Even the last Star One album felt more like Ayreon than Star One to me. I loved it, and of course Star One was never that far removed sound wise from Ayreon but I felt the moving away from the core four singers set-up just pushed Revel in Time that much closer to being Ayreon by another name. 

He also has his new 'old' project Plan Nine out next week which sounds like it's going to be straight up hard rock/heavy metal which is a bit of a change of pace. But I haven't been wowed by a new Arjen album because it was different since The Gentle Storm. Golden Age of Music was the first Arjen album I didn't buy since I started listening to him. 

Video doesn't premier on YouTube for another seven hours yet, but you can hear the song on Spotify already.