13 years after his last proper solo album, Dutch polymath Arjen Lucassen has gone apocalyptic on Songs No One Will Hear, with a little inspiration from some of his favourite sci-fi-themed records. He tells Prog why he wrote “the sountrack to humanity’s final days,” what he’ll be doing when the asteroid hits and his future plans for Ayreon.
It’s one of many popular suggestions we hear these days to promote a healthier, more carefree approach to life: dance like no one’s watching. Similarly, the idea of making music like no one’s listening is surely an attractive one to any artist who labours under the weight of audience expectation.
Arjen Anthony Lucassen’s primary creative vehicle, Ayreon, have built a substantial following over 30 years and 10 studio albums, increasingly on the back of grand overarching concepts, multiple voices and rock opera-style narratives. So it’s little wonder that he relished the idea of taking a break from that self-created arena to make a record with fewer preconceptions surrounding it.
His desire to make a solo album was heightened by his recent work on a range of different collaborative projects. While putting together the Ayreon live album 01011001 – Live Beneath The Waves, he was also collaborating with Simone Simons on the Epica singer’s solo debut, Vermillion, and resurrecting his early 90s act Plan Nine to release The Long Lost Songs.
“At some point I said, ‘I’ve got to do something for myself,’” Lucassen explains. “I need to be an egomaniac, and make a solo album where I don’t have to take into account what other people expect.”
Which is one way in which the title of Lucassen’s third solo album proper, Songs No One Will Hear, sounds appropriate. But then you find out the concept informing it, and the phrase takes on a new meaning. It’s the kind of question that comes up in social conversation every so often, in various guises: what would you do if you only had a few months left to live?
Fill the time with gigs, holidays and exotic experiences? Gather loved ones to make spend quality time with them? Seek alternative treatments or pursue unlikely sources of salvation? Throw caution to the wind in an end-of-days hedonistic rampage? Sink despondently into depression at the bleak prognosis?
Lucassen has pondered such questions over the years, and considered many such reactions; and the variety of phenomena that such a global crisis might provoke turned out to suit the eclectic range of musical styles he was ready to draw upon.
“I thought, ‘What would people do if there was an asteroid heading to destroy Earth in five months?’ Some would be despairing; others would be like, ‘Oh well, it’s over. Let’s party!’ Others would be in denial or even relishing the prospect. So those contrasts really fit the music.”
Those moods swing from the soul-searching of The Clock Ticks Down – ‘The working man has quit his job/The kids won’t go to school... the whole damn world has lost its mind’ – to the denial of Goddamn Conspiracy – ‘They’re trying to keep us blind... they’re gonna lie to you/ They’re gonna hide the truth.’
“That was one of the easier ones to write,” Lucassen admits. “Because it feels like it’s a hot topic at the moment; there’s a lot of this kind of thinking. The people who didn’t believe there was a Moon landing, didn’t believe in Covid, they wouldn’t believe this was real either.”
He envisages some people reacting to the apocalyptic news by ‘climbing aboard the pleasure train’ for ‘one wild and steamy shaggathon,’ as he describes it on Shaggathon. “I couldn’t avoid the subject. I mean, what’s likely to happen? You’ve got five months to live and all restrictions are gone. That’s kind of the silly song of the album – but then straight after, there’s a song called We’ll Never Know, about a couple who are expecting a baby girl, but they’re never going to meet her or find out what she would turn into.”
I’m not a metal singer. My favourite singers are John Lennon and David Gilmour… I can do that. But my music is very dramatic
That song sees the less-than-expectant mother’s role voiced by guest Floor Jansen of Nightwish, offsetting Lucassen as her partner. Irene Jansen, Floor’s sister, also features on the album; but Lucassen himself handles most of the other vocals, in another point of difference from Ayreon’s more guest-heavy sets.
“I have a limited voice,” he admits. “I’m not a metal singer; I can’t hit high notes. My favourite singers are John Lennon and David Gilmour, that kind of style. I can do that. But my music is very dramatic, so there are some bigger parts, contrasting voices, climaxes of songs that I just can’t sing, so I needed really strong female singers for that.”
As for the instrumental side of things, he says, “Ninety per cent of the stuff I do myself, like guitars, bass, keyboards. But I want a real drummer. And there’s other instruments I can’t play well enough.” Hence cameos such as German hurdy-gurdy player Patty Gurdy and Mexican violinist Marcela Bovio – the latter of whom also featured in Lucassen’s Stream Of Passion project.
But the one aspect of the album that’s arguably key to the story is the radio DJ-style commentary running between most of the tracks, courtesy of Mike Mills of Australian prog rockers Toehider. Placing the scenario firmly in the present day, he plays a mouthy, shock jock-style YouTuber, and the moment he announces the human race has ‘five months before our planet becomes a cosmic ashtray’ we’re in no doubt as to the thematic thread joining these songs together.
It makes for considerably more storytelling clarity than can be found on some concept albums that have long been celebrated in prog over the years. “I’m not one of those musicians who says, ‘I want people to interpret the music their own way,’” says Lucassen. “With so many concept albums I used to listen to as a kid, like The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway or Tales From Topographic Oceans, I would read the lyrics and I’d be like, ‘Yeah, sounds cool, and it’s great music. No idea what it’s about!’
Humour is often missed in prog… I didn’t want a heavy dystopian album where we’re all gonna die and it’s all terrible
“I always wanted to immerse myself in an album, and that’s why I liked War Of The Worlds with Richard Burton, or Journey To The Centre Of The Earth with David Hemmings. They really draw you into the story. It can get cheesy and over the top – you sometimes hear that from the more sword-and-sorcery bands – ‘From out of the darkness, the hero!’ – that’s not my thing, but I do like narration.”
He resisted the temptation to offer a neat, happy ending to his story. “I thought at first, ‘Let’s get inspiration from movies.’ But usually there would be this hero at the end, you know – a Bruce Willis character who destroys the asteroid. I didn’t want that. I wanted to end humanity!”
It turns out, though, that it’s possible to find humour in wiping out the human race. There’s a strong light-hearted element running through Songs No One Will Hear. “That’s often missed in prog,” says Lucassen. “Peter Gabriel had that with the lawnmower, costumes and stuff; and I’ve liked that in music ever since I heard Frank Zappa. I didn’t want it to be like a heavy dystopian album where we’re all gonna die and it’s all terrible.”
Listeners well-versed in his previous solo output will also find references to his past, plus other apocalyptic imagery from rock history, in songs such as Dr Slumber’s Blue Bus. It’s about a mysterious figure arranging a trip for thrill-seekers to the deceptively named Sanctuary Island retreat, ‘where it all will go down.’ The offer is ‘first-class seats to the end of the world’ and a place to party before we’re all eviscerated. Dr Slumber, it turns out, is closely related to the mysterious medic offering blissful euthanasia in Lucassen’s 2012 song Dr Slumber’s Eternity Home, from his last solo album, Lost In The New Real.
there’s going to be chaos. I’d rather be on Sanctuary Island saying, ‘OK, man, bring it on!’
He admits the notion of the world ending in five months owes something to Bowie’s Five Years – and the “blue bus”? is Mr Mojo Risin’ from the grave, it seems. “I was considering recording some covers that talk about the end of the world. Of course, on The End by The Doors, Jim Morrison is singing, ‘The blue bus is calling us.’ I don’t know what he means; but it sounded like an appropriate vehicle to the place where the end is going to happen, right?
“And to be honest, I’d be on board! Because, you know, it’s going to be the end of the world, with tsunamis, radiation, starvation – there’s going to be chaos. I don’t want to be part of that. I’d rather be there on Sanctuary Island looking up saying, ‘OK, man, bring it on!’”
One positive message that cuts through is the need to appreciate the present, regardless of how bleak future prospects may appear. As the narrator puts it: ‘We’re not dying today/ Right here, today, we are not history.’
“You can despair and you can cry and complain all you want,” Lucassen explains, “but all you can do is to enjoy the moment. It’s about emphasising the value we have – we’re going to die, but not today.”
I know fans are waiting for a new Ayreon album. I’m recording little ideas on my phone
That’s comforting to hear; as is the fact that the ever-industrious Lucassen is also already back on Ayreon duty. He recently worked on some 30th-anniversary live shows in his native Netherlands (An Amazing Flight Through Time), featuring many of the collaborators from Songs No One Will Hear plus plenty more backing musicians and audio-visual elements. “It needed a lot of preparation,” he says. “The visual storyboard, the LED screens, the lasers and pyros – there was a lot of work to be done.”
Meanwhile, a follow-up to 2020’s Transitus is already in gestation – if only in its author’s head for the most part. “I know there’s a lot of fans who are waiting for a new Ayreon album. I’m already thinking about that and recording little ideas on my phone. But it could still take a while I can’t put a timeline on it yet.”
No worries. After all, nothing and no one is about to blow the world up any time soon...
Songs No One Will Hear is on sale now via Century Media.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
