Over the course of the first four years of the album’s public life, Tommy has noted specifically on many an occasion in interviews, on social media, and from the live stage that the Styx family wants everyone to hear The Mission from start to finish by following their strongly suggested “no shuffling!” policy. In fact, you’ve probably heard Tommy say something to the effect of “Take the whole trip uninterrupted!” before he introduces one of The Mission’s key tracks, “Radio Silence,” in many of Styx’s pre-pandemic live sets over the past few years. (Naturally, once it’s safe for everyone to return to seeing and performing shows together in the same physical spaces, The Mission will again be played live from start to finish at scheduled and/or rescheduled dates/locales to come.)

As noted in this space 48 months ago in my official capacity as the chief information officer of the Global Space Exploration Program (or GSEP for short), I wrote that the “sonically sweet” The Mission is Styx’s “most ambitious, most challenging, and most rewarding release to date” — and that’s not just hype, either. The album has that rarefied timeless quality to it that makes it feel as if you’ve known it forever, yet still feels like it’s brand-spanking new. I was able to experience Mission songs in various stages of progress — and always on headphones, to keep the sonics hush-hush from anyone else in the vicinity — as they were being created behind closed doors over their 2-plus-year gestation period, with the ensuing end result being a career-defining work, to say the least. 

To that end, The Mission is an aurally adventurous 43-minute thrill ride that chronicles the trials, tribulations, and ultimate triumphs of the first manned mission to Mars in the year 2033 onboard a spacecraft with the more-than-likely familiar name of Khedive. From the hopeful drive of “Gone Gone Gone” to the stargazing machinations of “Locomotive” to the rough-riding blaze of glory that permeates the hard-charging “Red Storm” to the elegiac optimism of the closing track “Mission to Mars,” The Mission succeeds in delivering the greater good from a band that continues to fire on all cylinders, now 49 years after signing their first recording contract back in 1972. (And you can quote me on that — all of it.)