BlueSunCorp

I can honestly say that I have never looked forward to an album as much as this. It's Ayreon's 7th album, and the 5th instalment of the story that began with The Final Experiment. Ayreon, a project of Arjen Lucassen, have an unorthodox and experimental musical style. Their albums are Rock Operas incorporating numerous genres, including progressive rock, metal, folk, classical and electronica. Music and lyrics are, as always, composed by Arjen, who once again has a small singing part. Drums are again provided by Ed Warby. The singers are mainly new, although a few Ayreon veterans have been included in the cast.

The Personnel for the upcoming album are as follows:

Vocalists

Forever (Main Cast)

• Hansi Kürsch (Blind Guardian)
• Daniel Gildenlöw (Pain of Salvation)
• Tom S. Englund (Evergrey)
• Jonas Renkse (Katatonia)
• Jørn Lande (ex-Masterplan, ARK)
• Anneke van Giersbergen (ex-The Gathering)
• Steve Lee (Gotthard)
• Bob Catley (Magnum)
• Floor Jansen (After Forever, Star One)
• Magali Luyten (ex-Beautiful Sin, Virus IV)

Man (Minor Cast)

• Simone Simons (Epica)
• Phideaux Xavier
• Wudstik
• Marjan Welman (Elister)
• Liselotte Hegt (Dial)
• Arjen Anthony Lucassen
• Ty Tabor (King's X)

Instrumentalists

• Arjen Anthony Lucassen - All guitars, bass guitars, keyboards, synth, programming
• Ed Warby (Gorefest) - Drums and percussion.
• Jeroen Goossens (Flairck) - Flutes
• Ben Matho (Dis) - Violin
• David Faber - Cello
• Joost van den Broek (After Forever) - Piano

Solos

• Lori Linstruth (ex-Stream of Passion) - Guitar solo
• Michael Romeo (Symphony X) - Guitar solo
• Derek Sherinian (Planet X, Yngwie Malmsteen, ex-Dream Theater) - Keyboard solo
• Tomas Bodin (The Flower Kings) - Keyboard solo
• Joost van den Broek (After Forever) - Keyboard solo

I have to admit, after The Human Equation, I was a bit worried about how the next album would measure up. The cast was incredible, not only featuring vocalists from three of my favourite bands (James LaBrie from Dream Theater, Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth,and Devin Townsend) but innumerable others that I have come to love. The music and the story were fantastic as ever, and were even more varied than Ayreon's previous albums. However, it seems that my pessimism was unfounded, once again Arjen has compiled an amazing cast of singers and instrumentalists (with favourites of mine such as Daniel Gildenlöw, Hansi Kürsch, Jonas Renkse and Tom Englund) and there isn't a sample that I don't love.

The album is released on January 28th for most of Europe, January 29th for U.S and Canada, and I can't wait. Although the plot remains uncovered, it sees a welcome return to the sci-fi theme. The track titles (available on the official Ayreon site) and the lyrics from the samples certainly seem to tie together the main plot points from the previous albums, and will hopefully provide an answer to the ambiguous ending of The Human Equation. Even the title (Binary for 'Y') is getting me excited. I can't wait to see how Arjen progresses the story. If you've never heard any Ayreon before, this will be a great place to start.