Devil Music A-Z: Ayreon

Every once in awhile I feel like listening to something epic and intricate. The problem is there isn't too many bands I enjoy that combine both of those elements.Around the time I was rediscovering Dream Theater's more recent releases I was also looking for some other prog metal bands and ran across the name Ayreon. The cover art was visually striking so like I do with anything new I did some research on them. Well the them is actually a he in the form of Arjen Luccasen who is a musician/composer/director from Denmark. And Ayreon was actually a musical concept spanning multiple albums for years much like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series in books.
Pretty tall order so could this guy pull that off or was it going to be a cheesy mess of power metal proportions every time? The answer was both. Many a guest vocalist were thrown in to each album which could also be dangerous because of the contrasting styles but Arjen managed to pull it off. Bruce Dickinson, James Labrie,Simone Simons,Mikael Akerfeldt,and Devin Townsend to name a few had popped in. I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed these albums as much as I did. So in short if you like prog rock/metal you should definitely give these albums a try, there's enough material out there that should please some folks.After the jump is some videos from the project including Devin Townsend's piece. If you're used to Devin you might not be used to this song.



Trailer for the Human Equation


Here is the Myspace link to check out more material.