THE HUMAN EQUATION

Two CDs, a documentary DVD, all packed in a cardboard case, what more can I possibly want? Well, actually, two great CDs, a cool DVD with also cool artwork. I could have given 6 stars.

When I bought the CD, I did not know anything much about Ayreon, what kind of band was it, and where did it come from. Plus, the price was heaps expensive, which made me wait for around 4 months before I could buy the set. I just hoped no one will buy the set before me. So, I went to that same music store everyday for four consecutive months just to make sure no one touches it. In the end, it's all worth it.

I went home, ripped all the tracks to my computer, and then played the first track while looking at the artwork. It was a cool first track, pretty slow actually, for a "progressive metal" album, just like people said. But it is such a nice song, really calming vocal, very simple. Then I continued to the second track, Isolation, which really blew me away from my desk, for about 4 metres. Now that what I call a progressive metal song. A combination of virtuosity, feeling, and progressiveness and other things that make you feel the song. The best thing about the song is the chord progression and the keyboard solo, they are too cool. So then I continued my musical journey with these two incredible CDs. Arjen Lucassen was right, this album is a truly combination of metal, progressive rock, folk, maybe some country, to some more mainstream genres. A song like Love (track 11) is a completely different song to Pain (track 3), which makes this album a really unique album. This is probably due to the variety of musical tastes of the vocalists, and musicians. Several big names, like James LaBrie, Mikael Akerfeldt, Devin Townsend and Heather Findlay took part in the creation of the album.

And just like other epic albums of progressive rock, The Human Equation offers a nice story behind the album. The Human Equation. Portrayed human's life in many different aspects, reflected in the characters of the singers, Fear, Reason, Love, Passion, Pride, Agony and Rage. Of course, also the main characters, Me, his Wife, Best Friend and Father. The story began when the character Me (as me, yourself) had an accident, a pretty strange accident when he hit a tree although no one was there. Since then, he began to think and reflect his life, in conscious or subconscious state. For example in the song "Memories", Arjen Lucassen sang "It's been ten days, it shouldn't last this long, the doctor's mystified nothing's physically wrong". It shows that at that time, the main character was still under a subconscious mind, remembering all the good times he had with his Best Friend. Then it comes when we know that the character Me was actually an unhappy individual, although he was portrayed as a complete person, with a good life. However, he had a bad relationship with his father, best friend and his wife. Then slowly, as the album flows, he fixed these aspects and made his life better. This is a cool story, I reckon, because it reflects some of our life, and yours too, probably.

Now after I finished listening to the songs on the CDs, I asked myself, "How on earth they made this album? And what is Ayreon really? Well fortunately, the DVD explains it all. So don't just buy the CDs, but the set that I bought, a really cool compliment to the great album. Enough talking, buy it now. Or if you have bought it, listen to it again now, just like I am doing right now.

Motion personified alpha - Imoeng

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