LOST IN THE NEW REAL

Lucassen's Lowest Point So Far.

"Lost In The New Real" is a 2012 album by multi-instrumentalist Arjen Anthony Lucassen, a.k.a. Ayreon, the name of the project his man has been most successful with. Even though it is the same person writing the songs, the result is no way near as memorable as Ayreon's material, when Arjen was capable of forging landmark Prog Metal albums such as "The Human Equation".

Lightly played Progressive Metal has been Arjen's trademark in his music, and apparently still is: the crunchy, distorted guitars are here, but so are the abundant lead synthesizers that give to the music a strong spacey feel a-la-Star Trek. It is no surprise as a matter of fact that there is a strong Space Opera feel, not only in the album's flow but in the lyrics, which honestly can be either incredibly cheesy or kind of interesting, not really for the quality of the writing itself but the concepts/ideas that Lucassen can come up with. He puts in his stories a little bit of silliness, but for the most part, it ends up not being that entertaining, compared to the lyrics of another Prog Metal classic with a Space Opera concept, Devin Townsend's "Ziltoid The Omniscient".

The songwriting is hit-or-miss, some songs can be quite catchy and memorable, other borderline pathetic in their over-synthetic production and cheesiness. Another big flaw is the various inconsistencies of the album's natural flowing: especially due to the fact that this is a concept album, the result ought to be a coherent piece with a good climactic ending and with a solid succession of songs throughout; instead, a lot of these songs seem to be very loosely connected, especially in the second half of the album; plus, the ending is anti-climactic to the extreme, causing the final moments of the album to sound rushed and destined to end with an abrupt bump the album really doesn't deserve to have.

Lucassen is a great musician and has done some great music in the past, but his subject material was a bit risky, meaning that it could have fallen into full out tackiness, and it never really did. But now, "Lost In The New Real" falls in that ditch, something that had to happen eventually. Hopefully, just a temporary visit down there.

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