VoyagerFearless In Love

Unless you’ve been living under a rock in 2023, chances are you’ve come into contact with the cosmic prog-meets-powerpop delights of Perth’s very own Voyager.

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From representing Australia and placing in the top 10 of the Eurovision Song Contest this year, to teaching bewildered TV hosts how to growl, it’s entirely fitting that Voyager would unleash a new album what’s been one of the biggest years of their career.

For many, Voyager’s prog magnetism has pinged rockers radar well before Eurovision even entered the chat. A band who have previously shared stages with the likes of Deftones, Devin Townsend, Poppy, Opeth and countless others, the Voyager renaissance in 2023 is also now culminating in their eighth full-length album; Fearless In Love readily embodies its courageous moniker while carrying the torch of Voyager’s earlier outings. Bursting in with The Best Intentions, Fearless In Love kicks off with a perfect expression Voyager’s MO; luminous guitars, glitzy hooks, brushes with rock and the effervescent vocal stylings of Danny Estrin. Balancing progressive rock with metal and pop hues throughout, tracks like Prince of Fire and Ultraviolet shine in technicolour, with the former welding glossy keys and sharpened riffs, and the latter gleefully and seamlessly flitting between menace and glittering pop alongside Estrin’s Jekyll and Hyde vocal delivery.

Fearless In Love readily embodies its courageous moniker while carrying the torch of Voyager’s earlier outings.

Describing themselves as “the musical equivalent of Guardians of the Galaxy”, the Perth group’s 2022 Eurovision single Dreamer captures this essence in spades, with its Scandinavian metal bones fleshed out alongside sweet ‘80s pop flavours dressed up in a neon sonic spacesuit. A percolating, hallucinatory delight, Dreamer is pure vibrant Voyager fare. It also balances out a billowing The Lamenting. From bombastic prog (Submarine), to glossy synth-metal (the 2023 Eurovision single Promise), thunderous rave-rock hybrids (Twisted) and lush candy cosmic journeys (Daydream), Fearless In Love explores and uplifts without ever stagnating in one sonic space for too long. And between the razor-sharp basslines and fiery guitar solos of Listen and the searing yet vulnerable closing track Gren (Fearless In Love), Voyager can’t help but carry you away with their buoyant and extremely sharp charms.

For long-time Voyager fans, Fearless In Love will be simultaneously unmistakably familiar yet fresh, vividly expanding the Voyager universe into dazzling new heights without losing their long-established trademark sound. While the candy-coated prog and flashy displays throughout the new album are undeniably suited for the extravagant trappings of Eurovision, there’s a refreshing and irresistible progression on firm display via Fearless In Love, and Voyager have boldly tripped the light fantastic and emerged something that will appeal to lovers of prog, pop bangers and everything in between.

STANDOUT TRACKS: Ultraviolet, Dreamer, Promise
STICK THIS NEXT TO: The Black Queen, The Midnight, Seventh Wonder