THE HUMAN EQUATION

"Allegro Maestoso", that's what we could say in a few words about this concept album by Arjen Lucassen. There's a story in the background of this double CD, but that's not the most important part here, as much of this work seems to have been laid out as a play and a spectacular musical show. Lucassen has chosen carefully 11 singers from the progressive scene and assigned to each of them the perfect part for the timbre ad mood of each of their voice, each singer is an actor in the play, which counts 4 "humans" (Me as the main character, his wife, his best friend and his father) and 7 "emotions" (Reason, Love, Passion, Fear, Rage, Agony, Pride). The play is divided in 20 Days (one for each of the track) where each actor duets with other, countless are the overlapping of two voices in beautiful duets. Listening to the play with the lyrics in hand - the booklet is also carefully crafted, each page bears in the background a day and some small hints about the lyrics being sung - , it's astonishing how carefully Lucassen chose each voice giving its own the perfect part for the timbre it owns, for example, though I don't like Opeth's singer voice much, when it screams, playing Fear he is perfectly in the part! Music throughout has been played entirely by Lucassen himself, helped on drums by Ed Warby and by someone else playing Violins, Cellos and Flutes. As I said, the whole of this awesome work has the feeling of a 100 minutes-long "Allegro Maestoso"; all 20 tracks are really pumping and strong bearing an epic and grandious mark, "Allegro", because they possess a happy mood and "Maestoso" because of the grandious passages. Overall, the work is absolutely good and a must have for all sharing an interest in progressive metal, but in the end there's two things that told me not to give it 5 stars: it's long; it's a feeling I also had with Spock's Beard "Snow"; during the 100 minutes of this awesome effort one can lose the point of the story. Second, too many passages of guitar and keyboard share a common sound and timbre, there is not much variety in composition and sounds throughout the album, though violins, cellos and flutes sometimes break into the scene, few times there's something really different from the rest.