THE WHIRLWIND

The Whirlwind is Transatlantic’s third studio album, released eight years after Bridge Across Forever. Eight years is quite a lot of time and a lot can–and actually did–change in each musician’s lives, though I’m referring here mostly to Neal as he’s the person behind the lyrics on The Whirlwind. This mind shift, I think most clearly visible on his solo albums starting from Testimony, had an obvious influence on album’s lyrical layer.

Other than what I’d call a classic-transatlantic you can find here some resemblances to early Flower Kings–let’s say the Retropolis era–in “A Man can Feel” or some classical-rock singing, bit like Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler’s, in “Lay Down your Life”. On a strictly instrumental level, the album does not present so many joyful arrangements as previous CDs did. The mood is kept solemn for the most part and the album introduces more heavy riffs, with “Dancing with Eternal Glory / Whirlwind (Reprise)”, the longest and not necessarily full- speed-multi-note composition in the mood of Dream Theater’s “The Spirit Carries On”, bearing most resemblance to Transatlantic’s previous songs. Still, you can find some interesting themes here and there, such as a Bigelf-like passage near the end of “A Man can Feel”, or a short but utterly amusing keyboard tune, quite like a main theme from my childhood’s cartoon Koziołek Matołek, in the tension-growing passage of “Overture / Whirlwind”.

So to sum it all up, The Whirlwind–a 77 minutes long epic, though only because it has been called one on the “making of” DVD as listening to the album did not gave me such an impression–is an interesting but I wouldn’t daresay essential album. If I were to rank Transatlantic albums, I think I’d place The Whirlwind right after SMPTe with Bridge Across Forever on the top. This is strictly personal impression that depends on what are you looking for in music and The Whirlwind is a wee-bit different than what I’ve expected to come from Transatlantic.