Whether it’s serendipity at work or simply good planning ahead, the arrival of Voyager’s eighth album hot on the heels of their appearance at Eurovision seems like a case of striking while the iron is in the fire. So, is Fearless In Love the album that can help the band cross over to a wider, dare we say mainstream, audience? It certainly possesses plenty of qualities that should appeal beyond the borders of the prog world, with its big choruses and accessible melodies, but those are balanced out by fiery guitar solos and slamming breakdowns.
One common criticism of progressive rock is that the genre has become retrospective, forever harking back to its heyday of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The birth of the form was a reaction to blues-based rock, experimenting with bringing in ideas from classical music and jazz. Yet subsequent generations have brought new approaches to the form, from the arrival of prog metal in the 1980s and then progressive death metal in the 1990s.
