Warthur Ayreon's third album pulls out all the stop - gathering a small army of guest vocalists, Arjen Lucassen goes for broke, offering up a two-CD rock opera with a plot straight out of cheesy fantasy B-movies: a party of mismatched adventurers from across time and space have been assembled to go on a quest into the Electric Castle because... well, don't lean too hard on the plot otherwise it'll fall over.

Unfortunately, Lucassen just doesn't pull the project off. Firstly, there just isn't 100 minutes of top-notch music here: there's too much filler and too many musical ideas are bent out of shape in order to accommodate the storyline. His ambitions also seem to have run away with him when it comes to the wide range of vocalists invited to take part in the project - sure, there's some talented people here, but there's too many of them for the purposes of the narrative, with the result that some of the vocalists don't get many more than a few lines and the characters in the adventuring party are little more than cannon fodder to be killed off or written out of the story bit by bit. (You have a talent like Fish onboard and you kill him off partway through? What are you thinking?)

To be honest, I really don't get why this album got the attention it did. It gets points for excess, I suppose, but a narrative concept album built on excess but without strong music or a good story to back it out is just empty bluster.

AtomicCrimsonRush Ayreon's first classic album has garnered a veritable cult following among prog addicts and Ayreonauts alike. There are many highlights on this prog rock opera, including the lengthy fan favourite Isis and Osiris, and my personal favourite Amazing Flight. The garden of emotions has some innovative moments along with the dark aggressive The castle hall. Cosmic fusion is a spacey track in 3 parts and the finale that includes The two gates is truly majestic and full powered.

This is a metal release with tons of ambient keyboards and terrific vocals from all involved. The running time of the 2 CD opus is a whopping 102:35, making this a quality and quantity purchase. The concept is heavy handed with castles and medieval futurism, but works well with other Ayreon albums.

Arjen Lucassen plays all guitars, some mandolin, bass, and Minimoog, Mellotron and keyboards, with Hammonds on this album. A special mention to the incredible talented Thijs van Leer on flute, and the vocal prowess of Fish, Damien Wilson, Sharon Den Adel, and Anneke van Giersbergen on vocals. This is an excellent introduction to Ayreon and one of the best prog albums of 1998.

adg211288 This was my introduction to the Ayreon project, and this album blew me away with just a single listen. It is the best album I have ever heard by anyone. From the Pink Floyd sounding beginnings of Welcome to the New Dimension, to the bluesy Amazing Flight, Across the Rainbow Bridge with its entertaining lyrics to the death growls in Cosmic Fusion and finally the heavily progressive classic rock sounds of Another Time, Another Space, the album had me transfixed. Into the Electric Castle has everything that I have ever looked for in a progressive metal record, and everything heard is of top quality. Amazing stuff.

The vocal cast is diverse, and Arjen Lucassen has made some really good choices. The Highlander is voiced by Fish (ex-Marillion), a Scotsman, and therefore, the perfect choice. The Barbarian has a bluesy voice and when he sings he really sound like he fit’s the part. Jay van Feggelen sounds arrogant and I can really imagine him in my mind portraying the role. He sings with an attitude befitting the Barbarian’s role, and his voice truly and clearly says that anyone who messes with the Barbarian will lose his head. But it is the Hippie (Lucassen himself) that deserves the most special mention, for not only does Lucassen manage to truly sound like a real Hippie, who is stoned out of his head, his lyrics for the part are totally random, and very fitting for the part. Not to mention hilarious as hell. And I quote: “Scarlet Crimson Rosy Read, I must be dead, or stoned out of my head.” Perfect. Those three fit their roles best, but everyone on this album does an amazing job, but Peter Daltrey, who plays The Voice a.k.a Forever of the Stars, whose parts are all spoken word, deserves a special mention of his own. He’s a haunting presence throughout the album and as it plays and the story unfolds you find yourself wondering what horrors he has waiting for the eight singers of time (the name the cast is dubbed under) as they progress through the Electric Castle. This is not just music, this really is an adventure. Even though that saying is technically for Ayreon’s The Human Equation release, it actually fits with Into the Electric Castle much more so.

Although there is no bad track on this album, special mention goes to the following:

Amazing Flight, the second epic of the album, after Daltrey’s spoken intro, begins with blues style guitar playing, and fittingly, Barbarian on vocals. Hippie also features, with his wonderful lyrics. “Hey dude, you’re so uncool.” Since those two are the best on the album, there is no doubt in my mind that Amazing Flight is the album’s masterpiece. The rest of the song is instrumental, apart from Indian’s (Sharon den Adel) chanting, and it isn’t really metal, but is its progressive, folksy, and rocky and above all, an amazing ten minute flight of musical brilliance (Pun intended).

The Decision Tree (We’re Alive) features mainly Highlander and Barbarian, with other others on the chorus. Fish and van Feggelen really sound like they are arguing, even though they were recorded in different countries. Lucassen clearly has a vision of what he wanted, and he succeeded, this song is resounding proof.

Across the Rainbow Bridge is brilliant but bizarre not least because of Hippie’s hilarious lyrics. It has an epic chorus from the Roman (Edwin Balogh) and is really rocking, then you get Forever mid-song with backing music that sounds more suited to a circus than a metal album, and yet, oddly, it doesn’t really seem out of place with the rest of it.

The Garden of Emotions, features yet more arguing involving the Barbarian, this time with the Roman. It feels tense, and throughout the Egyptian (Anneke van Giersbergen) is portraying a feeling of uncertainty, which makes it unsurprising that the character dies at the end of the next song, Valley of the Queens.

Cosmic Fusion features the best female vocals on the album, courtesy of Sharon den Adel. It follows a structure like Amazing Flight, but features actual lyrics in its second movement, Death’s Grunt, which is aptly done completely in death growls, save for Indian’s dying scream that precedes another epic instrumental section, something that I often find myself wanting to dance to. I don’t really think progressive metal albums are supposed to make you want to dance, but to hell with it, this album rules like nothing else I have ever heard.

Perhaps the only down point is that during the process of the story, vocalists get killed off. Sadly the first of these is the Highlander, meaning he is absent on all but four songs, including the reprises at the end of closer Another Time, Another Space. It’s a loss certainly, but when I’m giving this album a perfect score anyway for its true originality and musical brilliance, not to mention a huge entertainment factor in the form of the Hippie, it’s a loss that doesn’t go missed for very long.

Arjen Lucassen's best album of any of his projects to date without a doubt.

(Review originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)

Conor Fynes 'Into The Electric Castle' - Ayreon (9/10)

Along with Ayreon's more famous rock opera, 'The Human Equation,' this fine masterpiece is another highlight of the symphonic metal band/project,

Put simply, the album melds a whimsical Ziltoid-esque concept with excellent progressive music. To make a long story short, 8 different cultural stereotypes (IE: Roman, Barbarian, Hippie etc) are plucked out of time to go on a quest through an extra dimensional realm. While it's certainly not an immensely engaging plot, it works well, and gives alot of potential to incorperate different styles, and despite the obvious fact that the story isn't supposed to emotionally envelop a listener, there are moments where the characters really show added dimensions to their personalities beyond the simple stereotypes they set out to be.

This album (unlike the Human Equation, which I fell in love with at first listen) took me a little while to appreciate it. I've always enjoyed it, but like a few other albums in my collection (Coheed & Cambria's 'The Second Stage Turbine, and Opeth's 'Still Life,' for example) when the album suddenly hit me, it was instantaneous and overwhelming.

It takes a huge amount of genius to make a double album this engaging. Beautifully produced, performed and composed. Gets better with each listen. An excellent addition to any prog collection.

Phonebook Eater Ayreon''s debut album is one of the most interesting albums of the genre. First of all, the band doesn't really have one singer, but always has different and famous guests for the vocals, like Fish and Damian Wilson. All the bands albums are concept/rock opera albums, including this one. Let me also just say that this is not just a progressive metal album:thanks to all the special guests, "Into the Electric castle" is a lot more progressive and eclectic than other prog metal albums. A perfect example is the impressive 11 minute track, "Isis and Osiris" a calm and haunting song, due mainly to the hypnotizing voice of the female singer. We also find some instruments that are pretty unusual to the prog metal genre, like the flute, the sitar and the cello. So many great and original moments here! i would like to mention also some amazing songs that blew me away like "Garden Of Emotions" just as haunting and mysterious as "Isis And Osiris", "Amazing Flight", very cheerful and more definitely more rock than metal, and then all the catchy ones, all in disc 2: "The Mirror Haze, The Two Towers, Evil Devolution, Tower Of Hope" This epic and crazy masterpiece never bores, actually you quite get into it. I can assure that those 100 minutes will be heaven to your ears, if you are a true prog fan. Even metal though.

Kilgannon As with many, this was my first introduction to Ayreon. Into The Electric Castle (ITEC) is an excellent introduction to Progressive Metal and concept albums respectively.

As a progressive metal taster the album presents a fine example as it not only incorporates the diverse ranges musically of the genre, but helps to introduce people to many other players within the genre via the varied and exciting cast used by mastermind Lucassen.

The album opens, excluding the mostly narrative "Welcome To The New Dimension", with two epics "Isis and Osiris" and "Amazing Flight", both of which are ceaselessly entertaining. Although the rest of the songs are considerably shorter, excluding "Garden of Emotions" that proves a magnificent opener for disc two, I never seem to notice as they all flow so well with each other that my ears tend to ingest it as one.

This is another positive feature of the Ayreon output: Lucassen manages to write such compelling narrative, although I do not rate ITEC as his most accomplished story telling, that whether you feel the work is a masterpiece or mediocre I would say it is possible to be made to stay put just to hear the resolution of the story.

The album is such a mish-mash, but not in a bad way, of styles that it is hard to say what sort of listener would appreciate this most. The album chops and changes between crushing metal to trippy-eclectic rock, to mellow acoustic, to varying electro-genres and everywhere in between.

This isn't my favourite of the Ayreon albums, but is brilliant nonetheless. My problems with it are that maybe it tries to encompass a few too many styles and therefore struggles to retain a solid, singular, feel to the album; some may find this a strong point. Either way this album is an excellent edition for metal fans and well worth trying.