THE FINAL EXPERIMENT

I recently bought this album, for I have been interested in Ayreon since I saw how many renown musicians he had worked with on THE HUMAN EQUATION. Unfortunately, I couldn't find that album, so I got this. THE FINAL EXPERIMENT is hardly a disappointment, but being a debut album it doesn't really show Ayreon in his full creative swing. There are some nice solos by Arjen Lucassen and some interesting songs, but what ruins it for me is the overall theatral nature of this project and sometimes it just gets too theatral. It reminds me of Nightwish (and that's not a good thing). Also some of the singers have voices I can't stand, notably that one on "Eyes of Time", who ruined an otherwise fine melody for me. He sounds like he belongs in Poison.

All in all, it's not a bad album and the concept may be interesting, but if you really wanna hear Ayreon/Arjen at his best, don't look for it here.