Voyager: Colours In The Sun (Season Of Mist, 2019)

Newly signed to the Season Of Mist label, Australian progressive metal band Voyager is back with a new album, titled Colours In The Sun. It’s the band’s seventh full-length album, and if there’s any justice it will be the album that puts this band in front of the wider audience their music deserves. I’m honestly not even going to pretend to be objective here. I’ve been a total Voyager fanboy since hearing Univers in 2008 and they’re one of my absolute favorite bands. I’ve always thought they had enormous crossover potential, and with this album they may have the perfect sound to reach those new audiences.

Colours In The Sun is a perfect balance between the melodic accessibility of V and Ghost Mile‘s experimentation. Super-catchy and accessible melodies up front pai with intricate guitar work just behind ready to ambush you with technical awesomeness. Drench the whole thing with Danny Estrn’s glorious ’80s synth-inspired keyboards and the most engaging vocals this side of Leprous and you have an album that makes an immediate impact and has tremendous replay potential. Basically the only way to not like this album is to be anti-fun.

Leading up to this album’s release, Voyager served up a few advance tracks, so songs like “Colours” and “Brightstar” have had some time (and repeat plays on YouTube) to become favorite tracks, but the whole of Colours In The Sun is just as good as those songs. Listen to that keyboard intro on “Sign Of The Times” and the way the guitars come in and tell me you’re not nodding your head and getting right into that one. And the way the vocal melodies on “Saccharine Dream” complement the ridiculous guitar work Simone Dow and Scott Kay lay down is just perfect. And speaking of Leprous, how great is Einar Solberg’s guest appearance on “Entropy?” There’s still plenty of crunch and heaviness here, but melody is definitely the driving force here, and it works so very well.

There are some really great melodic releases this year, and there are some really great progressive releases as well. Colours In The Sun is the very best of both worlds. This is Voyager at their very best, and is the kind of album that should expose this massively talented band to all new audiences. This is progressive metal that remembers to be fun, melodic metal that still challenges its listeners, and is just a fantastic example of five musicians who are on the same page and seem to be having a blast making new music. This is a top five album easily for me, and is in the running for best album of 2019.