If carefully crafting massive prog rock operas is your day job, what do you do for fun? Well, if Arjen Lucassen’s new project Supersonic Revolution is anything to go by: playing rather spontaneous-sounding seventies-inspired hard rock with a bunch of relatively local friends. ‘Golden Age of Music’ is an often humorous, but always sincere tribute to Lucassen’s heroes from the seventies. And yet, with a small army of young bands imitating the big seventies rock bands, ‘Golden Age of Music’ sounds remarkably fresh and inspired in comparison. Calling the album a labor of love would simultaneously be accurate and selling it short.

Despite ‘Golden Age of Music’ being a fairly obvious tribute to classic rock, the guitar work by Timo Somers in particular sounds surprisingly contemporary. Sure, stick Joost van den Broek’s Hammond organ underneath it and you’ve got an instant seventies sound, but the music of that decade never had that much downtuned guitar. Also, the album is not married to the seventies idea from a productional viewpoint. It feels like it could have been recorded live in the sense that there is never more than one layer of each recorded instrument, but as a whole, ‘Golden Age of Music’ sounds quite modern.

Full disclosure: I have always preferred the albums on which Lucassen works with one good singer – or only a small handful, like on the brilliant Star One debut – to the big Ayreon productions. For Supersonic Revolution, this singer is John ‘JayCee’ Cuijpers, who has been fronting Praying Mantis for the last decade or so. To be brief: Cuijpers might just be the best singer Lucassen has ever worked with, which is no small feat given the other names on that list. Cuijpers’ powerful voice – with a very natural-sounding rough edge to it – is a perfect fit for Lucassen’s work, especially for this particular album.

While the songs that surfaced in the past few months may suggest that the album is full of fun stompers like ‘The Glamattack’ and ‘Burn It Down’, the more subtle moments are probably my favorite songs on the album. ‘Holy Holy Ground’ is a surprisingly understated rock ballad in which Cuijpers gets all the space he needs to excel, while ‘Odyssey’ is the most full-on progressive rock song on here and a very well-constructed one at that. I’m also really fond of the pulsating, yet extremely dynamic rhythms of ‘Golden Boy’. Closer ‘Came to Mock, Stayed to Rock’ starts out as an acoustic, bluesy thing, only to turn into the most intricate song on the album.

There is something irresistible about the unpretentious nature of ‘Golden Age of Music’. While the songs are too carefully arranged to just be slapped together as they came along, the album has a very spontaneous vibe that makes it a bit of an anomaly among Lucassen’s discography. It’s also simply really good. The songwriting is excellent and the performances might be even better, while the lyrics may ellicit a chuckle or two. Be sure to check out the covers these guys recorded as well. Their cover of my favorite ZZ Top song ‘Heard It on the X’ is what kickstarted the band, but their powerful interpretation of Earth, Wind & Fire’s ‘Fantasy’ is the true highlight of the covers.

Recommended tracks: ‘Holy Holy Ground’, ‘Odyssey’, ‘Burn It Down’, ‘Golden Boy’