JEREMIAS - FORESHADOW OF FORGOTTEN REALMS

This is ambitious all right. A mish-mash of some sort of insane Broadway musical, metal, cheesy club music of the 70s (disco, soul, funk), a smorgasbord of keyboards ranging from the dreamy to Rick Wakeman-ish to electronic, multiple impressive vocalists. Not something you would expect from Austria. An unabashed old-school rock opera is what it is. And thank god, no growling or double kicks or gothic sopranos! In scope (but not in style) it approaches symphonic efforts by Haken or Dream Theater, although not as technically flashy.

And it's huge. Wait, a 16-minute song, three 9-minute, five 6-minute and a bunch of 3-minute interludes still fall under 80 minutes?! As is the case with mish-mash works such as this, the question is - does it all gel together? Well, more or less. It doesn't collapse under its own weight like Ayreon (that's why Arjen Lucasses writes about black holes and singularities, ha-ha). But tracks such as Continuum, The Run or New Age would have been killer songs if cut back a two minute of noodling.

A 4,5 stars. But since everybody inflate their ratings anyway, why not give them 5 for the effort and hard work?