Arjen Arthur Lucassen's Star One releases their third album, Revel in Time, via Inside Out Music. While Star One albums are not technically rock operas with a storyline, they can still be considered concept albums...

This is Star One's third album. Their debut, Space Metal, was inspired by movies set entirely in space, like Alien. Victims of the Modern Age focused on apocalyptic, dystopian movies like A Clockwork Orange. For Revel in Time the tracks are all inspired by movies that deal with some kind of manipulation of time. The title of the album is a mash-up of “Travel in Time” without the first “T”, and “revel in your time”, which sci-fi movie nerds may know is a quote from Blade Runner, one of Arjen’s favourite movies of all time.

While Star One don't consider their output to come under the umbrella of rock opera, I'd argue that fans of that genre will instantly fall in love with Revel in Time. And they certainly won't feel short changed. The album's 22 songs clock in at an impressive 2 hr, 13 min, 20 sec.

Fans of the group will notice a difference to the presentation of the songs. In previous albums there was the same cast of four singers: Floor Jansen, Russell Allen, Damian Wilson and Dan Swano. Each sang parts in all the songs, interacting with each other. But on Revel in Time features a different singer for each song. One reason for this was that the international travel restrictions due to the pandemic meant that Arjen Arthur Lucassen was unable to fly the singers to The Netherlands and record them in his own studio. So straight away it feels a little different to what has come before.

It touches on just about every conceivable creative button. There's plenty of '70s/'80s/'90s rock/metal/rock opera references to keep you glued to this album for its duration. Plus for sci-fi movie nuts there's the added benefit of trying to work out which movie inspired each song.

It's an album you're going to want to play to death now and revisit time and time again in the future.

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Nick Smithson