SPACE METAL

Arjen Anthony Lucassen is a Workaholic refering to music, it's almost countless how much he is releasing. In doing so his style always stays distinguishable. But that's the major problem, it's not always profitable to use an approved stlye over and over again, throughout different projects.

By now it maybe got around that Arjen is a fan of science fiction, you can find this issue everywhere Luccasen has worked on. So this project is called "STAR ONE" and how could it be any different the album is titled "Space Metal". Maybe you can guess what to expect from it. And if you take a look on the list of musicians it gets clearer and clearer. Many of these guys have worked with Arjen on AYREON as well. And that's the problem. No doubt, the musicians know what they're doing but it's dangerous to work with the same guys over and over again in different projects. STAR ONE doesn't sound very different from AYREON, the songs are more guitar orientated and sound more "metal" but the songwriting is kind of insipid and recurring. The keyboards sound exactly the same and the whole sound is interchangeable with AYREON.

Conclusion, Star one is a iniquitous extraction of AYREON and you get the impression that Mr. Luccasen used some old material or at least used some AYREON remains wich may were sorted out of former AYREON material because they where too poorly. Maybe this one is something for Luccasen fanatics but for those who hoped that this project would make a step foreward it is definitely insufficient. I would die of laughter were it not so sad: STAR ONE gets one star.