666sharon666 Golden Age of Music, the debut album of Arjen Lucassen's Supersonic Revolution, is basically the Dutch multi-instrumentalists love letter to the 1970s. Presented atypically for Lucassen as the work of a full band, with Arjen himself handling bass duties, the album was released in 2023.

Though injected with more of a dose of classic hard rock than would typically be expected of an Arjen Lucassen venture, the sound of the album is pretty much what you'd expect to hear from one of his projects. While one doesn't typically expect Lucassen to step too far outside of his progressive rock/metal comfort zone, he is usually able to offer an alternate slant to it than is heard on his flagship project Ayreon. While Supersonic Revolution has only the one vocalist compared to Ayreon's rock opera casts, Jaycee Cuijpers, the music itself this time feels just that bit too familiar and by the numbers, a marked difference from previous times Lucassen has done something under a new name such as Guilt Machine and The Gentle Storm.

In short, it's just not that exciting. While Lucassen doesn't really do outright bad albums, I think only a 3 star rating is deserved in this case because I can't recommend it except for completionists. This feels like an album made by a man who has nothing to prove (and he doesn't), just because he wants to. And that in its way is great, but it's also not going to win anyone over who doesn't already like what he does.