For the last ten years there has been a specific band that followed me wherever I went. Of course I’m not a victim of stalking but merely a victim to Arjen Anthony Lucassen’s pure genius that he puts into his musical project called Ayreon. Lucassen writes the music for these concept albums and then recruits some of the world’s best artists in Heavy Metal and Rock to record it and finally releases it under the name Ayreon. These past records have included talent like: Bruce Dickinson (Iron Maiden), Anneke van Giersbergen (The Gathering), Daniel Gildenlöw (Pain of Salvation), Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian) and Devin Townsend, just to name a few of the many musical geniuses that Lucassen has worked with over the years. It all began in 1995 when “The Final Experiment”, Lucassen’s first Metal Opera was released. Since then Ayreon have come up with seven records and Lucassen has also worked on three other side projects. Ambeon was an ambient based single-singer project featuring Astrid van der Veen, Star One’s songs were all based on popular science fiction themes (like Star Wars and Dune) and Stream of Passion was Lucassen’s first real band in over 10 years. SOP was initially created to showcase the incredible talent of Mexican singer Marcela Bovio a newcomer at the time. Since then Lucassen has quit the band to create his latest Ayreon record called “01011001”, but SOP are still going strong.
If you like challenging music with a lot of variation and if you are not afraid to open your mind to different genres than you should definitely have a look at Ayreon. They are worth it!
If you like challenging music with a lot of variation and if you are not afraid to open your mind to different genres than you should definitely have a look at Ayreon. They are worth it!
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