Ayreon
Transitus

When Arjen Lucassen's signature is on something, expectations are always high, and much was expected from this "Transitus" as well. But expectations don't always translate into concrete facts.

Is "Transitus" a great album or not? I don't know, probably yes, at least it's worthy of its name, and has all the elements that have made the Ayreon project beloved. But this time it seems that something is missing. The ingredients are more or less the same; it is always a theatrical rock/metal with great impact, with fewer folk and electronic elements, with a slightly more gothic and 19th-century imprint, and with a generally more direct approach. But it's precisely this desire to be more direct that represents a risk, sometimes playing nasty tricks. More than anything else, there is a general impression that there is a certain sufficiency in the arrangements; there is nothing truly grand that makes you jump out of your chair. Where have those beautiful metal gallops gone, those synth solos and those beautiful electronic triumphs, those powerful organs, that sparkling folk? Here, everything seems decidedly flaccid, weak, the guitars don't roar, and like them, the keyboards, the strings, the flutes, and everything else, the entire sound framework seems fragile and on the verge of collapsing. Furthermore, the instrumental plots are limited to meager passages and never evolve into something truly mature and substantial. The excessive number of tracks, 22 (it would be 27, but "Fatum Horrificum" is effectively a single composition), combined with the lack of variety, makes the album flowless, making it seem excessively long. It is the classic "homework" handed in without big pretensions, more than sufficient but done by the student who had accustomed everyone to an average of 8.

And then there is neither a true stylistic evolution nor real courage to dare; Lucassen thanked the fans for the album's success (reaching first place in the Netherlands), praising them for their open-mindedness in accepting an album different from the usual. Still, it seems there's not much different, apart from the already mentioned gothic atmosphere; on the whole, it seems a recycling of ideas already widely exploited but this time expressed not at their best. In short: Lucassen has run out of ideas this time but wanted to put them down anyway.

Everything has its time, and we could say that even the Ayreon sound has had its time. I might be going against the grain, but I argue that Lucassen was much more daring in the period from 1995 to 2004; in the first phase of the Ayreon project, each album was different and had its own identity: the very medieval atmosphere of "The Final Experiment," the sci-fi electronics of "Actual Fantasy," the more varied and complex "Into the Electric Castle," the Pink Floydian space rock of "The Dream Sequencer," and as a counterpart, the energetic prog-power metal of "Flight of the Migrator"; afterward, he found an "all-inclusive" formula with a double album that gathers different styles, a formula that proved to be the most effective and undoubtedly produced the project's best works... but it was known that at some point it would become stale and wouldn't work the same way. But it seems that good Arjen has realized it, as he announced he is working on the third Star One project, the interesting space metal project that surely still has much to say.

Conclusion: "Transitus," I emphasize, does not suck, it's certainly not a trap or reggaeton record, it's still an Ayreon record, and it is felt, but it just manages to be qualitative and dignified without taking off; much more was expected. Perhaps the disappointment album of 2020?