In 1995, Arjen Lucassen, former Vengeance guitarist, released his first album with his own project Ayreon. Arjen repeatedly hired well-known guest musicians for his projects, usually to produce concept albums with them. And when Arjen calls, they come. This was not as pronounced on The Final Experiment as on later albums. Ian Perry, Edward Reekers and Lenny Wolf from Hamburg took over vocals with Arjen. Arjen played many of the instruments himself. A total of 6 albums make up a long narrative thread in which the story of the extraterrestrial Forever is told. The Final Experiment is the first album. I have reviewed all 6 albums. The back shows us the list of musicians and instruments.

In 2084, things are looking bad for humanity, as total nuclear annihilation is imminent. Scientists have developed a machine that allows messages to be sent into the past in the form of dreams. The blind minstrel Ayreon from the Middle Ages receives these messages and is supposed to help avert the impending catastrophe. The music is progressive rock, symphonic rock, with all kinds of musical finesse. At times it is reminiscent of ancient music (Knights of the Round Table, Merlin), interwoven with a spacey ambience.

My highlights are “Eyes of Time”, “Sail away To Avalon”, “Listen to the Waves”, “The Charm of the Seers” and “Ayreon’s Fate”. It’s epic, spacey, folky, rocky, metaly. Sung and played by excellent musicians.

My conclusion about Ayreon's debut album is positive. It sets the tone for the other 5 albums that followed. I call it the "Forever Cycle". The production sounds perfect, one of the trademarks of Arjen Lucassen's Ayreon works. If you like rock operas, I recommend you give it a listen.

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.