Ayreon
The Human Equation
double CD with Booklet

Arjen Lucassen, the mastermind behind Ayreon, has been making brilliant concept albums since 1995. These concist of progressive rock, metal, folk and spacey music. At the same time, they are always epic and wide and peppered with guest musicians.

In 2004, The Human Equation was released, a worthy continuation of the Forever cycle. As the successor to Universal Migrator Part II, Flight of the Migrator, The Human Equation offers us the present. It begins in a hospital. The main character "Me" is sung by James LaBrie (Dream Theater), the wife of Marcela Bovio (Star One) and the best friend of Arjen Lucassen himself. "Me" is a torn character, a cold businessman ("thanks" to his father) who would actually rather be an artist. So Me drives his car into a tree on an empty road. Outwardly unharmed, Me now lies in a coma and wages an internal war, which ends after 20 songs, or 20 days in coma.

I would like to highlight Mike Baker as the father and Deven Townsend as Anger in song 16, "Loser". While the Father insults his son in the most vile way, Anger jumps out of the corner and screams everything to the ground. Just one song this time? Yes, because it doesn't make sense. Without exception, all of the songs are excellent. All of the characters, all of the emotions are excellently cast. Heather Findlay as love, Irene Jansen as passion. Picking out one in particular? Makes no sense. I don't want to give any spoilers, but the Forevers somehow have a hand in it. So just listen.

A conclusion. I had to listen to this album a few times because I found it overloaded, not new and bland. But with each listen it became clear to me: It is in no way inferior to Into The Electric Castle and its successor 010110001. For me one of the best prog rock albums of the 2000s. Arjen once again produces mind cinema, leads an army of musicians to peak form and creates another brilliant album. Listen to "Isolation", "Loser" and "Confrontation". Of course some of it sounds familiar and that's how it has to be because all the albums are interwoven. And there is a lot more singing. In the end, people are just an equation.

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.