Ayreon
Universal Migrator, Part II: FLight of the Migrator
CD with Booklet.
Progressive Rock/Metal

On July 20, one month after Part I The Dream Sequencer, Part II Flight of the Migrator. Arjen Lucassen, mastermind behind Ayreon, delivered a much rockier, metalier space opus here than in The Dream Sequencer. A total of 6 albums form a long narrative thread and each gets its own review. Flight of the Migrator is album 4. So in short: Ayreon makes progressive, metal rock music. Concept albums to which Arjen invites lots of guest musicians. Clive Nolan, Bruce Dickinson, Damian Wilson, Lana Lane ...

Flight of the Migrator continues the story of The Dream Sequencer. A Mars colonist continues his fantastic journey, which a machine called the Dream Sequencer allows him to mentally travel back in time. Despite warnings, he now goes back to the beginning of time and space. Musically, it is progressive, metallic, rocky, electronic, digital and analogue, lots of guitar, drums, bass, melotron, vocoder and what have you seen? This results in melodic, soft to hard, epic, spacey rock songs. Wonderful soundscapes, dreamlike structures.

The CD itself is decorated with a picture of Mars. The sound is crystal clear and, with Ayreon, technically perfect every time. Highlights from this concept album are "The Dawn of a Million Souls", "Into the Black Hole", "Out of the White Hole" and "To the Solar Systems". That's 32 minutes out of 65 minutes of playing time. As I said, the whole album goes down like a treat. I can already hear the conclusion knocking.

And the credits are something special…

My conclusion is simple. If you are looking for prog, metal, rock and epic synthesizers in perfect sound, you need look no further. If perfectly arranged music is too much for you, none of this is for you. The argument that "too many cooks spoil the broth" doesn't work here either. Arjen Lucassen is the main chef and arranges everything according to his wishes. And that's allways perfect.

Order of the albums of the “Forever” cycle, as I call it.

1995 The Final Experiment
1998 Into the Electric Castle
2000 Universal Migrator Part I „The Dream Sequencer“
2000 Universal Migrator Part II „Flight of the Migrator“
2004 The Human Equation
2008 0101100I

The photos are all from my CD. The rights to all motifs, logos, texts and fonts that can be seen in the photos are of course owned by the copyright holder.