VOYAGER-X

track-list:
Janus Face
Hypnotize You
Magic
You Crossed My Way
I Recognize You
Don’t Lose The Path
C’mon Live Your Dreams Together
Walk On The Dead Line
Crime Of The Century

recorded and mastered by Rainer Deckelmann at Deckelmann Studio, Zirndorf, Germany, 1997
digitally remastered by Romin Katzer at Tonstudio Katzer, Nuremberg, Germany, 2021

VOYAGER-X are:
Mario Gansen – vocals
Stephan Baumgärtner – guitar
Jörg Schreiber – bass
Chris Mordek – keyboards
Peter Webert – drums

VOYAGER-X travel back to the future with their brilliant Melodic Rock album ‘Magic’.
VOYAGER-X ignite a magical mixture of Progressive Metal, Melodic and Hard Rock on their album ‘Magic’, due out on 03/22/2024, via Dr. Music Records.
Listening to the nine songs, the listener literally floats away to times when musical virtuosity and vocal art still harmonized perfectly, and bands such as Van Halen, Survivor, Marillion or Saga dominated the charts.
VOYAGER-X skillfully built the bridge from Classic Bombast and Artrock to more modern sounds with their sophisticated Rock music.
Actually, the album ‘Magic’ was supposed to have been released in 1997, but shortly after the recording of the songs in Deckelmann Studio in Zirndorf, Germany, the musicians decided to put their band, then still called VOYAGER, on ice due to their life circumstances at that time, taking them all around the globe.
The group then awoke from this deep slumber just after the original line-up consisting of singer Mario Gansen, guitarist Stephan Baumgärtner, bassist Jörg Schreiber, keyboardist Christian Mordek and drummer Peter Webert met during an event in 2019, and the idea came up to continue what ended so abruptly 22 years earlier after an exciting decade of intensely lived Rock ’n’ Roll Lifestyle.
Due to other bands using the name in the meantime, the band was renamed to VOYAGER-X.
Political and still current events are processed in the lyrics, penned by singer Mario Gansen (ex-Grim Reaper, ex-Dynasty).
The musicians see themselves as entertainers with a particular claim, taking their audience on a journey through their own Rock history with their varied program.
Therefore, friends of great Melodic Rock in the style of Queensrÿche, Fates Warning or Savatage can now look forward to the release of the extraordinary album ‘Magic’, which was also remastered by Romin Katzer.
Between 1987 and 1997, VOYAGER belonged at the top of the emerging Rock scene around Nuremberg and Southern Germany.
With an original stage performance and strong songs, their refreshing sound inspired fans of harder Rock music at countless concerts and festivals.
Singer Mario Gansen recorded the album ‘We Were All Fools …’ with the German Krautrock formation Grim Reaper in 1979 and supported Judas Priest and also Motörhead during their 1980 Bomber tour.
During a Dynasty gig, his second bigger band, he met the VOYAGER-X musicians Stephan and Jörg for the first time, with whom he made music together successfully for the next ten years and who are still on board now.
‘Janus Face’, the opener of the album ‘Magic’, clearly sets the course for the coming three-quarters of an hour.
The song describes how dreams become nightmares and cruel images manifest themselves even during the day, turning life upside down and approaching the loss of control full of despair.
VOYAGER-X packed this challenging theme into an epic soundscape, and the American videographer Wayne Joyner (e.g. Dream Theater, Devin Townsend, Alter Bridge) produced a spectacular lyric video for this, which perfectly stages the song’s mood.
The next song is the second single ‘Hypnotize You’, often played as a concert opener.
Embedded in the daily stream of media overkill, bread and games for the people is a proven way to distract from real problems like wars, environmental destruction, and so on.
The third single ‘Walk On The Dead Line’ is inspired by a significant number of innocent people executed by the death penalty and deals with the idea of being accused and convicted of a murder you didn’t commit.
Spending years on death row in inhumane conditions, hoping for a miracle, and in the end, it turns out that one was actually innocent.
VOYAGER-X will convince with their impressive playing skills and the strong songs on ‘Magic’ in the current Melodic Rock scene, and this much is sure, it will not take long until the German band presents a successor.
But until then, we take with the album ‘Magic’ a beautiful timeout from the troubles of everyday life and reflect on the timeless dreamlike magic of great Rock music.