After filling the good part of their debut album, SMPT:e, with the 30-minute, three-part suite, "All Of The Above," Transatlantic defiantly out-progged themselves by featuring TWO half-hour epics on their follow-up album, Bridge Across Forever. Well, that was just child's play, my friends, because on their latest album, The Whirlwind, they just said "f**k it" and proceeded to throw down a single song that fills up nearly every second you could possibly cram onto a single CD. This 12-part, title track, monstrosity, goes on for a whopping 77 minutes and pretty much eats "Close To The Edge" for breakfast.
After a nearly seven year absence from the scene, progressive-rock super-group, Transatlantic, reunited in April of 2009 to begin work on their third studio album, fittingly titled, The Whirlwind. Thankfully, the boys, Neal Morse (ex-Spock's Beard), Roine Stolt (The Flower Kings), Pete Trawevas (Marillion), and Mike Portnoy (ex-Dream Theater), found time in their already hectic schedules to take on a short North American and European tour this spring, dubbed the Whirld Tour, and the results can be found on this incredible new concert DVD.
Whirld Tour 2010 was filmed on May 21, 2010, at Shepherd's Bush Empire, in London, and it captures Transatlantic's mind-blowing three hour set featuring The Whirlwind in its entirety, the three renowned epics from their first two albums, "All Of The Above," "Duel With The Devil," and "Stranger In Your Soul," and a couple of the best rock ballads ever wrizxtten, with "We All Need Some Light," and "Bridge Across Forever." Daniel Gildenlow, from the Swedish prog-metal band, Pain Of Salvation, accompanied the band on tour again, and his superb vocal and multi-instrumental accompaniment was an essential part of Transatlantic's massive live sound.
The concert kicks off with the entire "The Whirlwind" suite played from start to finish - and it is magnificent. Morse and Stolt are the two main songwriters in the band, and the song moves through a lot of different textures that naturally sound similar to late-period Spock's Beard, Neal Morse solo stuff, and The Flower Kings. But you are also in for a few very cool surprises, most notably the dark and hypnotic "Is It Really Happening?," which slowly builds to one of the most powerful crescendos I've ever heard.
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Article comments
1 - matt
Fantastic DVD, although I would happily have traded The Whirlwind for Suite Charlotte Pike.
2 - Paul Roy
They should have just added that too. What's another 15 minutes in an already three hour set right?