Review: Aryreon, 01011001
Feb. 10th, 2008 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsSo, as I mentioned the other day, I actually went and bought the new Ayreon cd, 01001101, which is apparently the ASCII code for 'Y', the name of the malaise-ridden posthumans who populate most of the space operas (quite literally, for once) that are Arjen Lucassen's music. 01001101 is yet another album in that theme, showing us a little more about the Y and their relationship with humanity.
To say the album is a testament to the intersection of studio skill and heavy metal musicianship is to understand the case. Arjen Lucassen is simply a mix master bar none, and he can and does convince some of the finest voices and instruments currently working the metal scene in Europe to come out and play with him. The lineup this time isn't as well-known as usual (no Bruce Dickinson or James LaBriea), but the voices are well-chosen for the roles he asks them to play. Daniel Gildenlow (Pain of Salvation) is especially strong, but then I like his stuff.
01001101, unfortunately, is a very uneven album. By now, we know the storyline: the posthuman Y live far away in time and space, and have come to suffer the same problem as Greg Egan's Transmuters: they have run out of things to say and do. They know as much as the universe is ever going to let them know except for one thing: why they should continue. A polis full of Ys has come into human space and some members come to believe that the humans have what they need: the desire to persist. Over the course of several albums (Flight of the Migrator, Into the Electric Castle, The Dream Sequencer, and The Human Equation), the Ys have conducted experiments on various groups and individuals to try and understand what makes us 'tick.' In 01001101, we learn a lot more backstory: their home sun going matrioshka, the Ys we know being those analogues that we humans can barely recognize, the co-option of outbound comets into escape vessels for the Ys, their arrival here, the debates that raged on board when they did. We also learn that they take on a new goal: seeing that humanity is headed towards the same cybernetic future they experienced themselves, they take it upon themselves to warn humanity about the consequences of their choices. This does not go well.
But it's not the storyline that's the problem. Yes, it's cheesy prog metal in support of an ambitious but poorly understood storyline, but the real problem lies in the music: there's nothing new about it.
Worse, there's something old about it. Some of the songs are outright fascinating: "Comatose" and "Ride the Comet" are powerful and wonderfully done, the opener "Age of Shadows" deserves some serious radioplay, and the guitar work on "Liquid Eternity" is amazing.
But songs like "Web of Lies" and "Connect the Dots" are just so weak they harken back to the bad ol' days of Arjen's first album, Actual Fantasy, the first draft (before "Revisited"). They're weak in a way that no song on The Electric Castle or The Human Equation is weak: they fail to support either the story or sustain the impression that the album is as musically perfect as Arjen could have made it. And that's a problem: we've come to expect so much perfect from Arjen that one bad song mars the whole album. That there are two falls on 01001101 does not bode well, and I hope that whatever he gives us next brings us back to a sensawunda[?] in both music and story.
To say the album is a testament to the intersection of studio skill and heavy metal musicianship is to understand the case. Arjen Lucassen is simply a mix master bar none, and he can and does convince some of the finest voices and instruments currently working the metal scene in Europe to come out and play with him. The lineup this time isn't as well-known as usual (no Bruce Dickinson or James LaBriea), but the voices are well-chosen for the roles he asks them to play. Daniel Gildenlow (Pain of Salvation) is especially strong, but then I like his stuff.
01001101, unfortunately, is a very uneven album. By now, we know the storyline: the posthuman Y live far away in time and space, and have come to suffer the same problem as Greg Egan's Transmuters: they have run out of things to say and do. They know as much as the universe is ever going to let them know except for one thing: why they should continue. A polis full of Ys has come into human space and some members come to believe that the humans have what they need: the desire to persist. Over the course of several albums (Flight of the Migrator, Into the Electric Castle, The Dream Sequencer, and The Human Equation), the Ys have conducted experiments on various groups and individuals to try and understand what makes us 'tick.' In 01001101, we learn a lot more backstory: their home sun going matrioshka, the Ys we know being those analogues that we humans can barely recognize, the co-option of outbound comets into escape vessels for the Ys, their arrival here, the debates that raged on board when they did. We also learn that they take on a new goal: seeing that humanity is headed towards the same cybernetic future they experienced themselves, they take it upon themselves to warn humanity about the consequences of their choices. This does not go well.
But it's not the storyline that's the problem. Yes, it's cheesy prog metal in support of an ambitious but poorly understood storyline, but the real problem lies in the music: there's nothing new about it.
Worse, there's something old about it. Some of the songs are outright fascinating: "Comatose" and "Ride the Comet" are powerful and wonderfully done, the opener "Age of Shadows" deserves some serious radioplay, and the guitar work on "Liquid Eternity" is amazing.
But songs like "Web of Lies" and "Connect the Dots" are just so weak they harken back to the bad ol' days of Arjen's first album, Actual Fantasy, the first draft (before "Revisited"). They're weak in a way that no song on The Electric Castle or The Human Equation is weak: they fail to support either the story or sustain the impression that the album is as musically perfect as Arjen could have made it. And that's a problem: we've come to expect so much perfect from Arjen that one bad song mars the whole album. That there are two falls on 01001101 does not bode well, and I hope that whatever he gives us next brings us back to a sensawunda[?] in both music and story.
