01011001

In the many albums that have provided bits and pieces of different storylines, this album, 01011001 is the one that ties them all up together, Completing the circle as Forever has said before. This technique makes it all the more epic, as well as holds a whole new creation mythology that spawns through different times.

The great things about this, and all Ayreon albums in general, is the wonderfully creative music, the captivating sci fi fantasy adventure storylines, and the list of virtuostic musicians who come together to make it so amazing. This album in particular sounds a lot darker than the rest, but it's certainly just as good as any other. Disk 1 takes you millions of years into the past on Planet Y, where the ancient race Forever is missing emotions and comes up with an experiment to relive their past by creating human beings on planet earth. Disk 2 Takes the listener through the Forever's human race, toiling through their hardships, experiencing old lost emotions, and the effects of a high increase in human intellect, which ends up in the far future, at the end of the peak of human civilization.

Elements on this album come from symphonic, progressive, metal, and electronic backgrounds, and also have that hint of Arjen in them that you can hear in whatever he writes. Like all other Ayreons, the additions of great names in progressive rock help to push this album to greatness. The main storyline is temporarily interrupted by filler songs depicting a few specific human beings on earth, and I think this is totally welcome, because it pauses the big omniscient view and allows the listener to view the struggles of the humans as the Forevers are watching them. It links every single album together, the final experiment in which the forevers attempt to help humans turn back time, the electric castle, revealed to be a psychic experiment by the forevers, the dream sequencer, which begins the mythology of the first cosmic entity with a soul, the Universal Migrator, and the Human Equation, which is revealed to be another experiment similar to the electric castle.

All in all, this album brings an epic storyline to a close in rounding up everything and making connections that are quite interesting... we revisit the now aged hippie from electric castle, who rants about visions of war, and about journeying through a dream world in a mental center. This is a bit like a look at the entire story through the eyes of the alien forevers rather than the humans that they happen to, and this fills in the information you were missing in the other albums, but at the same time leaves room for the listener's own interpretation.

The creation myth of Ayreon is so fun and amazing, that in class, when we chose to do projects on creation myths, like Christianity, Greek mythology, Egyptian, etc... I chose to do Ayreon! 5 stars... Obviously since it's Arjen. What else can you expect from such a genius?

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