Miracles do happen: seven years after the announcement of their creative break (which came much too early and lasted much too long), the original members of prog rock supergroup Transatlantic – Roine Stolt (The Flower Kings), Pete Trewavas (Marillion), Neal Morse (ex-Spock’s Beard) and Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater) – got together again and recorded a new studio album. The title: The Whirlwind. The music: breathtaking. The concert: ingenious. Or, as Neal Morse puts it: “The Whirlwind is a dazzling bit of brilliance inspired by universal lyrical themes and brought to life through a journey of music that listens and plays and breathes and lives. It’s like an epic novel by Tolstoy. It is the ‘War and Peace’ of prog.” To be honest, not even the greatest optimists would have expected this kind of awesome feat!
The special thing about The Whirlwind: Transatlantic have filled the CD’s whole playing time with one (!) 77-minute title track which is split into twelve chapters. The sweeping oeuvre kicks off with ‘Whirlwind Overture’ and ends well over an hour later with ‘Whirlwind Reprise’. Great art, in other words: “I think this is truly the epic of all epics”, comments Morse. “This is beyond anything we’ve ever done. A 77-minute-long continuous concept piece? I don’t know that any band has done that.”
There’s not much more that you need to know about The Whirlwind before listening to it, because this amazing prog rock masterpiece just has to be heard with your own ears and enjoyed with your own senses. It’s no exaggeration to claim that Transatlantic have surpassed themselves again on The Whirlwind. All fans of concept albums with a penchant for intelligent, melodic and multi-layered prog rock will love this album. Yet two questions remain to be answered: why did Transatlantic decide to take a break in the first place, and what was the inspiration that sparked The Whirlwind. “When I quit Spock’s Beard for spiritual reasons, I felt like I shouldn’t do Transatlantic either, because when I quit the one it seemed right to quit the other, too,” Neal Morse explains. “The bottom line is that I quit because I felt at the time that it was what God wanted me to do. Then a while ago I wrote a piece called ‘The Whirlwind’ that seemed to have Transatlantic’s name written all over it. I asked the guys if they wanted to get together to work on it and play together again. It just felt like the right thing to do at the right time.” Or putting it another way: it wouldn’t have been fair to keep the fans waiting much longer for a stunning recording such as The Whirlwind.
1. The Whirlwind (Part 1-12) 77:56
Bonus-CD: 4 new Transatlantic songs, 4 cover songs
Bonus-DVD: Making Of “The Whirlwind” over 60 mins
“The Whirlwind” is released through InsideOut Music on the 16th November 2009.
Band MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/transatlanticprog
Band Website: www.transatlanticweb.com/
The special thing about The Whirlwind: Transatlantic have filled the CD’s whole playing time with one (!) 77-minute title track which is split into twelve chapters. The sweeping oeuvre kicks off with ‘Whirlwind Overture’ and ends well over an hour later with ‘Whirlwind Reprise’. Great art, in other words: “I think this is truly the epic of all epics”, comments Morse. “This is beyond anything we’ve ever done. A 77-minute-long continuous concept piece? I don’t know that any band has done that.”
There’s not much more that you need to know about The Whirlwind before listening to it, because this amazing prog rock masterpiece just has to be heard with your own ears and enjoyed with your own senses. It’s no exaggeration to claim that Transatlantic have surpassed themselves again on The Whirlwind. All fans of concept albums with a penchant for intelligent, melodic and multi-layered prog rock will love this album. Yet two questions remain to be answered: why did Transatlantic decide to take a break in the first place, and what was the inspiration that sparked The Whirlwind. “When I quit Spock’s Beard for spiritual reasons, I felt like I shouldn’t do Transatlantic either, because when I quit the one it seemed right to quit the other, too,” Neal Morse explains. “The bottom line is that I quit because I felt at the time that it was what God wanted me to do. Then a while ago I wrote a piece called ‘The Whirlwind’ that seemed to have Transatlantic’s name written all over it. I asked the guys if they wanted to get together to work on it and play together again. It just felt like the right thing to do at the right time.” Or putting it another way: it wouldn’t have been fair to keep the fans waiting much longer for a stunning recording such as The Whirlwind.
1. The Whirlwind (Part 1-12) 77:56
Bonus-CD: 4 new Transatlantic songs, 4 cover songs
Bonus-DVD: Making Of “The Whirlwind” over 60 mins
“The Whirlwind” is released through InsideOut Music on the 16th November 2009.
Band MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/transatlanticprog
Band Website: www.transatlanticweb.com/
