Just picked up the Theory of Everything. Great music. Not sure about the vocals. Any thoughts or suggestions on what to buy next?
Just picked up the Theory of Everything. Great music. Not sure about the vocals. Any thoughts or suggestions on what to buy next?
Universal Migrator
His masterpiece...Into the Electric Castle. Fish, Damian Wilson ...can't go wrong with those vocalists.
His best all around album is The Human Equation. Good music, lyrics, realistic and encaging plot, and guest vocalists. The two part Dream Sequencer/Flight of the Migrator comes in second with some good songs and vocalist standouts by Russell Allen and Floor Jansen.
I tried Into the Electric Castle after the positive reviews but found it pretty silly in plot and lyrics. The guest vocalists were OK but nothing to write home about ... and this is coming from a Fish fan.
I'd say to just make your way back then. I find ITEC to be very different from his newer stuff. You could also try his solo album from 2012.
The Human Equation, possibly James LaBrie's best vocal performance for me. Lots of great guests and a storyline that's awesome. ITEC doesn't hold together well for me. I really like the heaviness in 01.... but some of the songs felt a bit shoehorned into the plot.
Start at the beginning and work up to Human Equation, then stop.
Duncan's going to make a Horns Emoticon!!!
I'll be that Topographic Oceans/Passion Play-lovin' guy and recommend my personal favourite, 01011001. I really like most of Arjen's projects (was not as sold on the most recent though) but 0101 is the album with the most music I love on it. It's the most over-the-top, at least in its execution (something like sixteen or seventeen different vocalists!), but to me it's the 'meatiest'. And I just love Anneke Van Giersbergen and Floor Jansen.
The two-part Universal Migrator is excellent as well, as is Into The Electric Castle. Those would be #s 2 and 3 for my recommendations. The rest of them are slightly more hit-and-miss for me but Arjen is one of those artists where if you like his general sound, you'll probably like most of what he puts out. The Human Equation seems to get the most love when the subject comes up but it's not near the top of my list (although the songs "Love" and "Loser" are both killers!)...
My other recommendation is the excellent and underrated Guilt Machine album. One of his strongest beginning-to-end releases IMO.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
No disrespect to the original poster but I'm wondering why so often people will start with a band's latest album first. Sorry, I just don't get that. It's not that difficult to do a little research and find out which albums by a particular artist are rated highly and they often aren't the latest.
Do not suffer through the game of chance that plays....always doors to lock away your dreams (To Be Over)
The project name has always sounded like a Hot Wheels car to me.
Sleeping at home is killing the hotel business!
"Into The Electric Castle" blew me away when I first heard it. I don't pull it out that often these days, but I still think it is a great album. "Dream Sequencer / Universal Migrator" is another favorite. Bottom line, if you like big bombastic prog metal with a lot of high profile guest vocalist and instramentalist you should love Ayreon.
I like pretty much everything Aryeon/Arjen Lucassen has done. One I haven't seen mentioned that is probably still my favorite is Actual Fantasy.
No offense taken. I got a CD from Prog Mag and thought I'd check them out. I went to Amazon and the title sounded interesting. I'll start with the first one next. Thanks for the inputOriginally Posted by Digital_Man
J
You've reminded me to pull that one off the shelf, I haven't listened to it for a while, and I have the 2-disc Actual Fantasy Revisited reissue with the 5.1 DVD!Solid album, but gets overlooked often because it is sandwiched between all those double concept albums.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
Ambeon:
Star One:
HuGo"Very, very nice," said a man in the crowd,
When the golden voice appeared.
She was gold alright, but then so is rust.
"Such a shame about the beard."
Another tally for The Human Equation being the finest Ayreon work that I've heard (I haven't gotten Long Binary or Theory of Everything yet).
Same here. When I first heard it (it was my Ayreon intro) I found the cheese factor to be a little charming, but these days I rarely re-visit it for that reason.
I didn't even know about Guilt Machine until I was reading another Ayreon thread here a few months ago. What a great purchase that was!
I am actually loving the new one but it did take a while for it to click. After it did it quickly ascended my best of the year list.
Regards,
Jon
Yeah, I really love that one. It may appeal to those who love Arjen's music but are less thrilled with the lyrics/plot/'cheese factor' of the Ayreon and Star One stuff. I highly recommend it.
Interviewer of reprobate ne'er-do-well musicians of the long-haired rock n' roll persuasion at: www.velvetthunder.co.uk and former scribe at Classic Rock Society. Only vaguely aware of anything other than music.
*** Join me in the Garden of Delights for 3 hours of tune-spinning... every Saturday at 5pm EST on Deep Nuggets radio! www.deepnuggets.com ***
Cool music, but cheese central! Especially Electric Castle. To me, it's the musical equivalent of the movie Krull
This tune off Human Equation I still think is very cool (though I'm not even close to a fan of LaBrie and well...could do without the happy, little, medieval interlude toward the end there) but I'm partial because I'm a huge Dev Townsend fan...
"Who would have thought a whale would be so heavy?" - Moe Sizlak
Huge Ayreon fan here. I'm curious as to what the problem is with the vocals on any of these projects, it's really the best part if you ask me, as Lucassen manages to get so many great performances out of a wide range of singers. My favorite by far is "The Human Equation", every track works for me, and I love the story. I'm not into lyrics or concept albums, but for some reason I totally bought into this one. I also love "Electric Castle". Yes, the story is silly, but the music is pretty amazing, and the vocal performances are stellar. The badly titled "01011001" has really great music and I enjoy the hell out of it. But Lucassen got a bit carried away with this one, something like 17 vocalist. Maybe too much of a good thing. The latest one is quite good, musically maybe his best yet, though I'm not sure out the vocalist lineup. Not totally sold on that part yet. But again, a blast to listen to.
Can't say any of the Ayreon albums are poor, but the "Universal Migrator" concept just didn't work for me, where it's split between the heavy disc, and the more spacey one. And it's not a rock opera, each song has one lead vocalist, an no interplay of characters. As individual songs though, still much to really like here. "Actual Fantasy" is also not a rock opera, and has mixed results. The very first one, "The Final Experiment" is a nice start. I'm not sure the very best performances are coaxed out of the singers at this point, I think they mainly do their own thing. But this album is the blueprint for the rest of the Ayreon rock operas.
I'm skipping the non-Ayreon albums and projects by Arjen Lucassen, as that's another topic entirely. I like some of those a lot too.
Those are not Ayreon albums, but Arjen Lucassen projects. I know, same guy behind it all, but the musical focus is much different. It's funny watching the behind the scenes footage from the Ayreon albums, where many of the guests would accidentally call him Ayreon intead of Arjen. James Labrie did it a few times for The Human Equation", but the mistake is acknowledged on the video. But I noticed a few more people do this for the recent album, and I guess at this point Lucassen gave up correcting people.
out of all AL projects Guilt Machine is probably the only one I'll hold on to. All latest AL attempts are pretty much shorter popish songs glued together to make em look like "epics", which they are not. IMO.
I'll have to get Guilt Machine since I started feeling everything from Arjen was sounding very familiar but these comments about it have me interested in checking it out...
Human Equation is also my favorite....
Enjoy the moment... It's the only way to fly!
The only Ayreon I ever got any mileage out of was Universal Migrator, esp. disc I.
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