FEAR OF A BLANK PLANET

"Fear Of A Blank Planet" was inspired by the book "Lunar Park" by Bret Easton and is based on a generation of kids who have grown up in an over saturated technological society, where they have everything at their fingertips - and thus have experienced so much growing up that they have nothing to live for.

It seems like this horrifying image of society has become pretty accurate today already. I just read in the newspaper the other day that, especially British youth has become very bored with their lives and thus spend their time drinking, having sex, doing drugs, being violent and so on and so forth. Apparently Mr. Wilson is concerned and he has every right to be! As a young parent myself I do feel that this is becoming the worst threat of raising our children. I wish they will continue to play outside while they are still young and don't become "couch potatoes" or worse. Not even thinking about doing drugs, having unprotected sex and being beaten up by other children for no reason at all.

So that's for the dark theme of the album. Now let's continue with the songs itself. "Anesthetize" surely is the heart of the album clocking 17 minutes and 41 seconds. I heard this song (previously called the beast, since people were not familiar with the title yet) for the 1st time during one of PT's FOABP tryouts. And what a tryout it was! Especially Gavin Harrison's drumming on it is absolutely amazing! No wonder Gavin was chosen by the readers of "Modern Drummer" as best progressive rock drummer of the year! Simply amazing!

Just before the heart of the album we find the mellow song "My Ashes" and the album kicks off with the title track, being a more up-tempo track in the style of the Deadwing album. After the heart of the album we are treated on another mellow, sentimental track called, hmmm, "Sentimental" On this song multi instrumentalist SW trades in his guitar for a keyboard and his playing reminds me of the "Stupid Dream" and "Lightbulb Sun" era. Wonderful mellow song you can dream away on.

After "Sentimental" there's "Way Out Of Here". It starts with a mellow intro accompanied by an almost whispering SW. After the whispering SW cries out "Way Out Of Here" and after that we get a more up-tempo song. Near the end some great guitar riffs! Pretty cool song.

The final track of the album is "Sleep Together" and it has an absolutely great beat and rhythm! This is one of my favourite tracks on the album, together with "Anesthetize" and the album title track.

Conclusion: With FOABP Porcupine Tree might very well have recorded their best album up to date. Was PT going into a somewhat heavier direction with "In Absentia" and "Deadwing", now it seems they found a nice mix between those two albums and for example the "Stupid Dream" and "Lightbulb Sun" albums. As long as Mr. Wilson continues making albums like these we surely don't have to have "fear of a blank planet".