INTO THE ELECTRIC CASTLE

What a great album, my friend introduced me to this when I was in the early days of my prog exploration and I owe him. The story behind ayreon is well documented, it is fronted by Arjen Lucassen who plays guitar and a lot of the other instruments on the album and he enlists famous prog musicians to play and sing for him.

The first side of the disc has some great songs, the two 10 minute epics are both major highlights with some great mandolin work in isis and osiris and some fantastic female vocal work (a highlight over the whole album I must say), Amazing flight is my favourite song on the album very fun spacey song which gives a nod to oldschool prog. Rainbow bridge is another highlight on the first side.

The second side starts off well with the garden of emotions and again the female vocals shine here, highlights on the second side for me were cosmic fusion and evil devolution. There are some great solos there and even a bit of synth vs guitar dueling, there is a brief foray into guttural vocals.

Overall I feel I can only award this album 4 stars, there are some really great songs but there are also several fairly weak ones and some blatant filler (eg valley of the queens), also there is a lot of cheesiness too which can spoil the fun a bit I find. A good album recommended for fans of prog metal and modern prog.