Talking about a labour of love; apparently it took Koos Thönissen (the full name of the project is Koos J. Thönissen’s Cryptic Nature) some 8 years to finish this double album! From writing the story (a fantasy tale about dragons, unicorns and other creatures), to translating that into 14 songs and finding the right people to add to his creations. So with guests like Huw Lloyd Jones, Sascha Burchardt, Emmelie van Deurzen, Jacqueline van Elsbergen and Cathy van der Valk on vocals, Jeroen van den Biggelaar on a guitar solo or Ron van Rhee on flutes, Koos set out to make his dreams come true. All this meaning he performed all the other instruments himself! Or as he puts it himself, it was a steep learning curve, but so worth it.
For this album it is important to know the context of a song. Thankfully we have a storyteller (Ian Jillings) to guide us. So from the opening sequences of A Dragon’s Tale, the grandeur of Aenoor, the playfull and catchy Glynyd, to the much more extreme Gol Matoo / Meteor Impact or Ael Hathor / Nebuccor Captured, all songs serve a purpose and are shaped to recreate the vision. And it has to be said, a lot of time must have gone into creating the soundscapes used throughout the album. Be it horses, the evil Molgar, or other elements, the music and all around it somehow seem very visual.
This also means the diversity on the album is enormous. From soft, almost folky, to melodic progressive metal to ambient like parts to extreme vocals. In that respect one could compare this to for instance the work of Ayreon!
The culmination of all that hard work was that the album was chosen as one of the best concept albums of 2017 by Dutch radio show Progressive X Grooves, literally on its release day. One to check for sure, for instance via this video:
