Also of note, I really enjoy the artist who illustrated most of Ayreon's albums, including this one. His website is certainly worth a quick look.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
If Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were around today with a serious case of megalomania...
For the first actual music post of this blog, I'm writing about a truly amazing band upon which I recently stumbled: Ayreon. It's not so much a band as a large-scale project, led by the brilliant mind of Dutch multi-instrumentalist Arjen Lucassen. When not working on other projects, he'll compose epic-scale sci-fi rock operas and hire a team of vocalists and instrumentalists to bring them to life. The result is gloriously epic, gloriously nerdy progressive metal.
So far I've only had opportunity to hear one of their albums--their latest, 01011001 (the binary code for the letter 'Y' in ASCII). But that one album was enough to blow me away like nothing has for many months. It combines authentic analog synthesizers, crunching guitars, a cast of dozens, and an epic tale of the death of a planet and quest of a species to survive through life on earth into almost two hours of some of the grandest music you will ever hear. The beautiful lyrics deserve many listens and the prog metal musicianship is top-notch. Additionally, it apparently ties into large-scale story arc that spans nearly all of Ayreon's albums for an even bigger scale. Some are content with small music, but for those seeking big music, definitely give Ayreon a listen.
Also of note, I really enjoy the artist who illustrated most of Ayreon's albums, including this one. His website is certainly worth a quick look.
Also of note, I really enjoy the artist who illustrated most of Ayreon's albums, including this one. His website is certainly worth a quick look.
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After listening to more of Ayreon, I am nothing if not more impressed with them. All their albums save one revolve around the concept of an alien race called the Forevers who ruined their planet with the technology they depended on, losing their emotions in the process (this is the background for their albums, not a forced moral). With their own civilization fallen, they seed Earth with their DNA to give a new planet the chance to enjoy life that they wasted. Told from many different perspectives in epic style, these albums will get many repeat listens, I'm sure.
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