Band:	The Gentle Storm
Album:	The Diary
Style:	Acoustic Folk, Symphonic progressive metal
Release date:	March 23, 2015
A review by:	Ivor

Disc I [Gentle]
01. Endless Sea
02. Heart Of Amsterdam
03. The Greatest Love
04. Shores Of India
05. Cape Of Storms
06. The Moment
07. The Storm
08. Eyes Of Michiel
09. Brightest Light
10. New Horizons
11. Epilogue: The Final Entry

Disc II [Storm]
01. Endless Sea
02. Heart Of Amsterdam
03. The Greatest Love
04. Shores Of India
05. Cape Of Storms
06. The Moment
07. The Storm
08. Eyes Of Michiel
09. Brightest Light
10. New Horizons
11. Epilogue: The Final Entry

A full-album collaboration between Anneke and Arjen is something that's been eagerly anticipated ever since Anneke sang the part of Egyptian in Ayreon's Into the Electric Castle, which features probably one of the most emotional and beautiful Ayreon tunes ever written with her on vocals: the folkish "The Valley of the Queens." That was about 17 years ago, give or take. Apart from another appearance close to 10 years later, you could say that something like The Gentle Storm is long overdue.

With The Diary you are getting a double concept double album. Like a good concept album of days of yore, it tells you a story, that of love and separation, of waiting and hardships in the golden seafaring age of Dutch colonial times. The second concept is that it tells you this story twice, in the same words but using different arrangements. Thus you get a prog folk version referred to as gentle, and a folk prog rock / metal version referred to as storm. If you think of it as the former being the kind of unplugged version of the latter, you are more or less getting the gist of it.

Without having heard the storm version yet, 3-4 songs into the gentle side I had already made up my mind which of the two I was going to consider better and why. You don't think such an opinion is credible? What if I said that it only got confirmed after having listened to both versions in full? And that I've listened to both Anneke's and Arjen's music for over 15 years and have got a decent idea of how things can swing in certain arrangements?

So, my informed opinion is that, as a whole, the gentle version of the album is better. The main reason for it, however, is not immediately apparent. It's better because in a nutshell - and among other details that I'll get back to shortly - it sounds less Arjen than the storm version and has more a face of its own. Believe me, having something to the order of 15-20 albums to his name, sounding less Arjen comes as a virtue. Fundamentally, you can't hide from yourself and thus his music will sound like his. Moreover, his use of talented musicians tends to have a recurring pattern to it. The people he uses are good for a reason and while every talented musician brings something of their own sound to the table, some of the characteristics become immediately recognisable and hence appear repetitive in his music, especially if the context happens to be similar.

However, that is not all of it. While quieter in nature, through the choice of musical instruments the gentle version is the one that sounds more powerful. The low register string and wind instruments appear to have greater impact on the music than the regular distortion driven guitars and bass. Somehow (and a little bit ironically) the gentle version of "The Storm" is the one that sounds more ominous. And it's not the only one coming off like that. Furthermore, Anneke doesn't really need much instrumental support to shine. Give her an acoustic guitar and she'll sound sublime. I've seen it live; I know it for a fact. So in this regard, less is more. Having more breathing space only accentuates her beautiful voice while acoustic instruments tend to create a better counterbalance to her singing.

Having 11 songs in both arrangements, you get 2048 different combinations to compile your favourite version of The Diary. The freedom of choice is all good but is there really a point to it? At the core, the two versions don't sound that far apart, at least not like Deliverance and Damnation, not like Deconstruction and Ghost, not like Alpha Noir and Omega White, and not even like The Dream Sequencer and The Flight of the Migrator. While instrumentally vastly different, sound-wise the gulf is not all that wide. Individually some of the songs may sound better in the storm arrangement but a mix of different versions wouldn't work because, as a whole, the full prog folk album has more to offer. It is something that has a central idea to it, as well as being a rather more novel setting for Anneke and Arjen. To me it just sounds more pleasing.