THE FINAL EXPERIMENT

Ayreon's debut album is a decent blueprint for the sort of "turned up to 11" rock opera that the project would churn out over the coming years. Whilst I have to give Arjen Lucassen credit for taking such a cheesy concept and amping up the cheese for all its worth (there's a track called Ye Courtyard Minstrel Boy, for crying out loud), the actual execution took a while for me to warm to. Despite the Ayreon project eventually becoming something of a progressive metal powerhouse, don't expect technical intricacy of a Dream Theater-and-beyond level here - we're more in the world of bombastic rock opera than prog-oriented complexity here. Still, if you can appreciate it on that level - like Savatage and Planet P Project getting together and jamming - it's very fun.