Ayreon, The theory of everything

Phase I, singularity starts with the wonderful voice of JB from Grand Magus, one of the great vocal additions of this album and I’m already excited!  Arjen has the habit of making his singers sound better than ever and this album certainly makes no exception. It made me like Christina Scabbia, for God’s sake! All the instrumental parts are just awesome, in fact the only thing better than the amazing voices from this album is the instrumental. The mix between classic Ayreon and some touches of Jethro Tull here and there is beautiful.

Aaaaaand there it is. Today’s revelation brought to you by Arjen the talent seeker: Tommy Karevik. I like him in Kamelot and Seventh Wonder, he seems like a nice and talented guy, but my god I had no idea he can sound like that! Easily the best part of the album for me, musically, vocally, lyrically, in every single way. Followed by another great instrumental bridge, a great duet between JB and Tommy, great vocals from Marco Hietala, the discovery of Sara Squadrani and Ancient Bards, powerful goosebumps near the end…. I guess a shorter and more accurate review would be that I love each note of this song. Ok, not exactly every note. As well as the “oh no, I can’t believe you’re falling for this loser” part sounds musically and as accurate high-school talk as this is, I don’t really enjoy such mundane lyrics. That’s something I disliked throughout the whole album. The story is really interesting, Arjen has a knack for creating great concept albums, but the way it’s presented could’ve been improved in my opinion. I suppose his whole point was to sound like normal people talking, but for me lyrics should be more poetry and less everyday talk. Eh, the musical aspect more than makes up for the lyrical mishaps.

Phase II, symmetry: I love how atmospheric and almost creepy the whole beginning of the song. It just screams mad scientist, you don’t even have to know the story to realise something is going to go terribly wrong with this psychiatrist. And the “can you help us reach our son” part near the end of The consultation is beautiful, I can’t believe I actually like Cristina Scabbia, but there you have it, the magic of squeezing out talent you didn’t even know it’s there (sorry, I really don’t like Cristina). In fact, I’m in awe with every vocalist in this song, especially with Michael Mills as the father, who is another revelation (especially since I’ve never heard him or of him before, as opposed to most of the other singers of this project).

Ok, I love every single note of this song too. Everything is so beautiful and it flows so well and the changes of pace and atmosphere are done tastefully and coherently and I love how it constantly grows and evolves, without repetition, but without sounding disjointed either. There’s a reason progressive metal is my favourite genre and Arjen is a master of it.

Phase III, Entanglement: leave it to a true prog fan to start his song with a Pink Floyd-esque solo 🙂 Can’t complain though, Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull are great bands to draw your inspiration from and I can recognise Arjen’s work anywhere, so you can’t accuse him of lacking individuality. This is probably the weakest part of the album, though, it’s dragging a bit and lacks the sparkle. Tommy still kills it and he gets into character perfectly, he’s very believable and makes me really feel for him (which is really worthy of praise if you think of the fact that he’s a healthy grown up playing the part of an autistic teenager and he’s a singer, not an actor). I guess Marco is pretty good at this too, since his character annoys me to no end (I suppose that’s the whole point of it). And I can’t help thinking how putting this album into play would be like, even though I normally hate musicals.

Phase IV, Unification: I love Mirror of dreams, it’s so soft and sensible and it reminds me a bit of Valley of the queens. And after the relatively uninteresting Phase III, it’s great going back to that growth and evolution I appreciated in the rest of the album. The father-son duo is treading the line between cheesy and intriguing, but Tommy’s work on this album makes me think he’d be able to read the phone book and still sound amazing (which is not such great news for Kamelot fans, since this begs for the conclusion that Silverthorn is somehow worse then the phone book). I love the way we go back to the Phase I theme, not only it’s one of the best parts of the album, but I’m also a sucker for works of art that come full circle and end in a way similar to how they started.

Overall it’s a good album, with the first part being amazing and the second pretty good. I must admit, however, I was slightly disappointed. Part of it it’s because it came after the masterpiece that 01011001 was and I had huge expectations for it (especially since it was such an unexpected surprise to have one more Ayreon album when we all thought this project has ended), but I do think that it’s the weakest album of the project. That’s not to say it’s a bad album, it’s still eons away from most of the albums I have heard (and even liked), but I know he can do so much more. What can I say, I have been spoiled by Arjen and I’m not satisfied with anything less than extraordinary from him.