Review: Barock Project – Time Voyager

Style: Neo-prog, Symphonic Prog (Clean vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Big Big Train, Moon Safari, Alan Parsons Project
Country: Italy
Release date: 3 June 2024

After a five year wait marred by the instability of COVID and its damage to the industry, Barock Project have renewed themselves with their most cohesive and polished effort yet: Time Voyager. Barock Project was founded by multi-instrumentalist and composer Luca Zabbini in 2003 with the goal to make modernized prog rock that incorporates his classical influences, resulting in their unique brand of symphonic neo-prog. On Time Voyager, Barock Project delivers an epic time-travel themed experience that takes you far into the past and future in search of the present. 

In an interview with Euro-Rock Press, Zabbini detailed the challenges and misfortunes surrounding the previous Barock Project record, Seven Seas: their label struggled to support and promote them, and the pandemic ultimately brought their efforts to a standstill. While Time Voyager sees the return of their 2019 lineup, their drive to expand their reach internationally has given them a newfound spark of confidence and quality. Compared to my previous favorite of theirs—2015’s Skyline—Time Voyager incorporates more hook-oriented songwriting, cinematic and electronic arrangements, and varied instrumentation. Drummer Eric Ombelli also plays a greater role as a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and co-producer.

But before diving into the songs, I need to address the album art. Midjourney, or some similar AI art tool, was clearly used to generate it; the smeared roman numerals on the clock faces and generic fantasy style are dead giveaways. The fact that a single prompt could make countless variations of the cover cheapens the experience and ultimately renders it a hollow facade. Additionally, Barock Project sidestepping the role of an artist or designer for AI is ethically troubling, especially since they’ve previously worked with many great artists (including the legendary Paul Whitehead). Maybe in ten years we’ll get a remaster with proper art. That said, there’s a silver lining: the art is the weakest aspect of Time Voyager by far.

Time Voyager is a concept album where each track represents a particular time and place throughout history, connecting to the narrative through unique meditations on the passage of time. The opener, “Carry On,” packs much variety in its six-and-a-half-minute duration and establishes the rationale for the ensuing journey with the narrator’s anxieties about the past and future. “Carry On” shows how much they’ve matured in composing and arranging with its many creative transitions and its rhythmic drive that fluidly propels the song forward. 

Another aspect of Barock Project’s maturity is their tasteful use of heavier and/or metallic sections—I can’t tell you how many run-of-the-mill neo-prog bands try to write heavy riffs that end up limp and awkward in practice. The earlier Barock Project albums certainly had moments like that (such as the most brutal metal scream of 2012), whereas on Time Voyager the heavy sections support their songs’ structures with purpose. “An Ordinary Day’s Odyssey” exemplifies this with the balance between the heavier verses with pounding bass and Alex Mari’s soaring vocals to the later parts with piano and acoustic guitar. I wasn’t too fond of “Morning Train” at first because of its repetitive and meandering first verses, and yet the later half of the track takes a hard u-turn and reframes the first verse into a hard rock section with excellent high vocal harmonies, ultimately gluing the song together.

Luca Zabbini’s arranging is the highlight of Time Voyager. He practiced and improved his production work greatly during the pandemic. “Voyager” is a marvelous track with masterful transitions. Beginning with cinematic retro sci-fi synths and continuing into heavy, technical prog sections, the track then develops into a folk acoustic section with wonderful bouzouki played by Eric Ombelli. The varied instrumentation, eight-minute duration, and unique song structure of “Voyager” makes it a bold and unconventional lead single as well as one of their greatest songs since the Skyline era. It is among the best songs I’ve heard from Barock Project. 

Aside from the unconventional lead single “Voyager,” there are two other singles: “The Lost Ship Tavern” and “Propaganda”. The former takes the listener back many hundreds of years to a seaport full of nautical lowlife characters. An anthemic song featuring Celtic-style folk sections, a bombastic classical interlude, excellent organ riffage, virtuosic vocals from Mari, and guest violinist Alessandro Bonetti (Deus Ex Machina, PFM), “The Lost Ship Tavern” is one of the most well executed songs on Time Voyager. “Propaganda,” on the other hand, was a song I didn’t feel compelled by on my first listen. Its introduction features some silky jazz saxophone from the featured guest Manuel Caliumi, yet the song itself quickly veers away from that and becomes fairly middle-of-the-road with its social commentaries on propaganda and misinformation. Its lyrics ultimately suffer from a lack of focus and a touch-and-go approach to its themes. 

The outro track, “Voyager’s Homecoming”, brings a strong conclusion to the album’s journey. Aside from featuring phenomenal prog shredding in each instrumentalist’s part, it elegantly restates and concludes the musical and poetic themes of the album. It culminates with a reprise of “Carry On” using modified lyrics to state the ultimate message of Time Voyager: even if you’re lost in time, you can always carry on in the present.

Time Voyager has frustrating elements, but the cohesion of its narrative from start to finish is one of their greatest achievements. The crisp production delivers a level of confidence and polish that I’ve been hoping for them to reach since I first heard them. For myself, this all puts it on the same level as Skyline. The return of Barock Project was worth the wait as they’ve demonstrated their newfound energy and maturity in spite of their recent misfortunes.

Recommended tracks: Carry On, Voyager, The Lost Ship Tavern
You may also like: Southern Empire, Mystery, Karfagen
Final verdict: 6.5/10 (it loses a point for the AI art)

Related links: Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent