At times it estranges me that in the Netherlands, the country where bands like Marillion, Porcupine Tree and Anathema are very popular, only few native bands actually play music in the vain of these prog giants. This might be due to a failure in the Dutch culture, where most people only have interest in what’s happening beyond the borders. Strangest thing is that releasing an excellent album just doesn’t seem to be enough to gain any success. Bands like Ricocher, PTS and the long forgotten Marathon released massive albums, but somehow never reached the large progressive audience. Maybe this is due to the fact that you can visit a prog gig every few days in The Netherlands, I don’t know.

Fact is that “Unspoken Words” should be the next highlight in the Dutch prog scene. I could easily write that this band is going to be the best next thing, but I just know that the extremely high quality of their debut album, just won’t be enough to do the trick. This is a sad thing because the Aurora Project can easily measure itself with their foreign colleagues. I fear that the only way to gain international success and national interest is to invite famous musicians (the Ayreon way) or hire a beautiful female leading vocalist (the Epica way). We live in a spoiled country.