Farewell Thunder Child

"No one would have believed, in the last years
of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being
watched from the timeless worlds of space.

No one could have dreamed we were being scrutinized, as
someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm
and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered
the possibility of life on other planets and yet, across
the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours
regarded this Earth with envious eyes,
and slowly and surely, they drew their plans against us."

If there is one thing I love, it's science fiction. What better way to take an iconic piece of science fiction, and turn it into an amazing rock opera that would easily be my second favorite, if not my favorite piece of music ever written? (The other contender is Rainbow Goblins by Masayoshi Tanaka). Man oh man where do I even begin with writing this...... My mind has a million things that I want to say and I will probably forget a million and one of them.

I was recently just chilling and coding and I was browsing YouTube for some tunes and I noticed that one of my favorite bands TWRP had uploaded a new song for Halloween The Eve of War (feat. Dan Avidan) and it was AWESOME. I saw in the comments section that people were talking about this guy called Jeff Wayne and a War of the Worlds The Musical? I had to know: "What does the original sound like?" So I opened a new tab up and started digging. What I found, BLEW MY MIND!

So what exactly is this album? Well, for one, it's a journey. The album is a musical retelling of H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds". I would definitely describe this as a rock opera. Lots of sound effects, voice overs, and music woven together to tell a very riveting story. Man, I feel like I can't even do this album justice in this post but, I'm going to try my best.

The opening track "The Eve of War" was SPECTACULAR. In the first few seconds, you are greeted by the soothing baritones of Richard Burton. Then you're greeted with some dark and foreboding synths right before it picks up tempo to some sort of funk/prog groove. The first lyrics we hear are "The chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one he said" The song tells the story of the Martians planning their attack against earth.

The setting for the story is Victorian London but mixed with Sci-Fi and it works. War of the Worlds is one of my favorite pieces of science fiction and hearing it told in a musical form is very cool. (it's also crazy to think that the original radio broadcast caused a panic because people thought that we were actually being invaded by aliens).

The original album was released in 1978 and it has a lot of that era of instrumentation. It has a very nice blend of prog rock, disco, dark synths and orchestral wizardry. The vocals are amazing and the voice acting is superb. Don't even get me started on the sound effects. This album literally takes you on an emotional rollercoaster of an adventure from start to finish. Like I said, I would say this would probably be one of my favorite rock operas next to Rainbow Goblins by Masayoshi Tanaka.

Some of my favorite tracks are...well....ALL OF THEM. There literally isn't a bad track on the album. Now, there are some songs that I like more than other but, overall, this album is a winner from start to finish. If I had to give this album a score, I would give it

This album is a musical masterpiece and it's a shame it took me so long to find it but, now that I have, it's definitely going in my playlist for future listening.

I have so much to say but, it is getting late and I feel like I can't do this album enough justice in text. If you are curios about why I'm raving about this, I have put the video below. If you have time, I HIGHLY recommend you give it a listen.