Search - Ayreon :: Into the Electric Castle

Cheeseball Story but Great Music

Mr D. | Cave Creek, Az United States | 11/05/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Sooner or later I had to get to Ayreon



Should any of my readers not know who Ayreon is, let me edify you. Ayreon is not a band, not really. Neither is Ambeon. Let me explain. Ayreon and Ambeon are projects, you might say alter egos of brilliant Dutch composer and musician, Arjen Anthony Luccassen.



You see, Arjen has borrowed one from the book of the ever successful recording broker, Alan Parsons. He composes a Rock Opera and then like the mice followed the Pied Piper into the river, several well known, at least to me, guest singers and musicians follow our piperish leader, Arjen, into the studio to record, this wonderful music.



Now Arjen hasn't used this successful formula once or twice. No he's made eight exciting albums this way, two of which are double albums. Mind you now, I understand there's a waiting list to be in Arjen's next production.

I can see why, it must be fun, mingling with other very talented people and making this remarkably interesting and different music. It's probably like, if I may regress to seventies terms, a "happening". And how different it is!



Into the Electric Castle, as do all of Arjen's projects, tells a story and in this case it is a science fiction story centered around eight strangers brought together into a dimension of no space and no time. It seems, if Luccassen ever decides to hang up his guitar he could make a living writing sci-fi.



Here is a summary of the story from Ayreon's Website:



"'Into the Electric Castle' tells the story of 8 stereotypical characters from different periods of time who suddenly find themselves in another dimension. A Highlander, Knight, Egyptian, Indian, Barbarian, Roman, Hippie and Futureman each try to understand where they are and what they are supposed to do. It is then that a voice rings out from the sky to tell them that the dimension they have arrived in is built on dreams and fears. In order to find their way back to their own dimension and time, they must go in search of The Electric Castle. During the search every character is forced to confront his or her innermost fears, and not everyone survives the treacherous journey to the Castle."



"At the end of the journey those that successfully dealt with their personal demons find out that the voice belongs to an alien named 'Forever of the Stars', a member of an alien race living in a distant galaxy. These aliens created planet Earth and its people as an experiment so they could study, and hopefully one day experience emotions, as they themselves lost feelings eons ago."



"'Into the Electric Castle' is a double CD. On disc 1 we experience the journey to The Electric Castle and on disc 2 we find out what happens when they arrive there."



Haven't I read something by Stephen King like that. Yeah, I know, the plot is pretty ch-e-e-ze ball but honestly the music is fabulous, here are some highlights:



"Isis and Osiris" is an eleven minute multi-part song.



"Let the Journey Begin" is the first part with Highlander and Indian singing in what is an ethereal, almost Moody Blues part. "The halls of Isis and Osiris" is sung by Roman and Egyptian as the pace picks up nicely with a choppy orchestral beat plus a sitar and guitar solo. "Strange Constellations / Reprise" the third and forth parts narrated by Highlander (Fish) with an atmospheric background and some remarkable guitar and keyboard work. This is an amazing piece of work that I could use a thousand words describing.



"The Decision Tree (we're alive)" sung by Barbarian and Highland, with all joining in on the chorus's. It is a medium slow very catchy song with lots of organs and synths.



"Across the Rainbow Bridge" sung by Knight, Roman and Hippie. Opens with acoustic then switches back and forth to electric while keyboards in background to a varied pace. At three+ minutes it changes with a chugging beat at a medium fast pace. really great song.



"the Garden of Emotions" is a ten minute multi-part song that opens Disc 2. "In the Garden of Emotions" sung by Hippie (actually spoken through a distorter of some sort) and Egyptian slowly and atmospheric. "Voices in the Sky" picks up with a heavy crunchy beat and some very nifty organ / synth work. sung by Barbarian, Roman and Indian. "The Agression Factor" is sung by Futureman , Knight and Indian and is a mix of the first two parts



"The Castle Hall" sung by Knight and Barbarian, starts out with some very deep heavy guitar work and ominous singing before mellowing out at a medium tempo. Great melody and hooks.



"The Two Gates" sung by Barbarian and Knight, played in a medium heavy beat and pace with some more great hooks and all singers join in and pace changes again. Excellent!(Trying to describe these songs is impossible, every couple minutes everything changes)

CONCLUSION



I have a soft spot in my heart for Ayreon. They, are the catalyst that has propelled me in the musical direction I have chosen. I accidentaly came across them while downloading and was so overwhelmed and intrigued that I wondered what else I could be missing. It turns out, it was quite a bit, so for the last two years I have been relentless in that nothing worthy gets by me.



The whole time I was writing this review I had this eerie

feeling that our characters, Highlander, Indian , knight etc. were members of that inane TV show, Survivor. Of course in our story the characters die instead of getting voted off. Oh, I didn't tell you? Sorry.



Ok, the conclusion. Ayreon is remarkable, and Into the Electric Castle is his most remarkable project. This is Progressive music like no others make. It is bombastic, highly varied (even within each song)and even at 100 minutes it captivates you. I just finished a review on another rock opera, a rather good rock opera I might add but it pales in comparison to this, this is chicken salad while it is chicken sh-i-t.



So, if you don't buy this album I'm going to report you to the consumer office of bad judgement for obviously following a path of mundane, mediocrity.



"

Another Winner from The Master Of Prog!

S. Morales | Levittown, NY United States | 10/25/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Another mind trip down Arjen Lucassen's melodic and enthralling lane! Ayreon's 3rd full-length album has got yet another story-line prog rock-opera approach, and features many talented vocalists from different bands around the world, such as Threshold, Arena, Marillion, The Gathering, and Within Temptation. The story this time is of 8 characters being plucked from different times of earth (Barbarian, Highlander, Hippie, Egyption, Indian, Roman, Knight, etc as well as Peter Daltry doing narration) by some unknown alien race, and placed through some kind of journey through, yes, an Electric Castle, as well as other places of time and space. Some will live, some will die, etc, etc. The 2-disc newly released version features CD-rom on both discs on the making-of the record, and though the album itself isn't as good as his latest masterpiece "The Human Equation" there is still plenty to love on this.



We start off w/ an 11-minute opus "Isis and Osiris" which is easily the best track off the album. Featuring very atmospheric, and sweetly melodic acoustic guitar, this song features clean male and female vocals which stretch out beautiful harmonies. The songs gets louder when the prog-metal guitars and orchestrations kick in. More of a spacey prog metal track. After this is a more jazz/blues oriented song w/ very big, warm and gruff male vocals but still has an underlying space-prog foundation. The song leads into beautiful female indian chants. All tracks on this first disc are good. There is a plenty mixture of all different forms of music as well as instrumentals. From epic sung arena-rock style choruses to psychodelic passages to melidious opera vocals all with a spacey foundation.

The second disc is where the 4/5 star review really hits. Though there are genuinley good songs on this one, Arjen seems to have a problem (as he did w/ the following record, "Flight of the Migrator") with overdoing guitar, keyboard, and vocal runs. This along with a more basic use of metal riffs as well as orchestrations and not many deeply entrancing or hypnotizing vocal harmonies contribute to an overdone collection of songs where only about half will keep you coming back. There are some brilliant vocal layering techniques he uses, so i gotta give him credit for that; most especially on the opening track "The Garden of Emotions" where in one spot there are 3 different vocalists singing three different sections at the same time, yet it all fits! "Evil Devolution" is somewhat lazy in that the verse is straightforward and the orchestrated chorus isn't that interesting, plus it's too short. Highlighted tracks here are "The Castle Hall","Tower of Hope" (which unfortunately only really has a good chorus but not much else), and the beautiful 60's/70's prog-rock Beatles influenced "Another Time, Another Space."



What I love most about Arjen is that no matter what type of music you're into, metal or not, anyone can appreciate the fundemental beauty of his music. this isn't just good rock, it isn't just good metal, it isn't just good prog; it's great music for people with great taste in music. I would personally pick this up second to his latest album, because though it's not quite as good it's still got a lot to give. A very atmospheric album delivers, though not all its songs are successes, but at a low price w/ an abundance of good songs, what's stopping you?? All hail Arjen! The Master of Prog!"

Very interesting

Guy Campeau | Stoneham, Québec Canada | 05/21/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I don't know the project Ayreon very well, but what I can tell, as a prog music lover, this double cd is very well done and produced.

The composition are complex and the sound is very hot, the music is amazing, my only complaint is for the narrative sequences, these sequences should have been written on the cd booklet only, to let all the place for the music and vocals. Overall, an interesting double cd."