Arjen Anthony Lucassen's creative masterpiece is Ayreon and has been for years. He doesn't limit himself to the confines of Ayreon and has simultaneously other projects running; Ambeon, Stream of Passion, Guilt Machine and Star One. And each of them are well defined soundwise and easily separated from his main project.

The Star One concept was created to display some of the darker and harder aspects of his sound universe, moving more towards power metal than his other projects did. The vocalists were handpicked to portray the characters in the concept chosen for the first album; sci-fi movies set in space. Even thought the commercial success was limited it still went down very well among his hard-core followers.

Now it is time to take a new journey into the sound universe of Star One, and the sound is definitely the same, but with the usual aging and perfection that comes with working on your craft. The lyrical concept has changed slightly, the songs are this time around based on dystopian and post-apocalyptic sci-fi movies, and most of the movies take place on Earth.

"Victims of a Modern Age" is more guitar-oriented, harder and heavier than "Space Metal" (2002), and the production is excellent; the drums are tight, the bass is solid, the keyboards sound brilliant, the guitar tones are amazing, and vocals are superb. Russell Allen, Damian Wilson Dan Swanö and Floor Jansen do all deliver stellar performances and that alone makes this album outstanding.

I do however think "Victims of a Modern Age" leans a bit too much up against the first album, I wish it had taken a slightly different direction from it's predecessor, but that it just me nit-picking because this is still nine superbly crafted, written, performed and produced songs from the mind of Mr. Lucassen. He proves once more that his creative universe is a lot wider than Ayreon and that his creative well is far from empty...