THE HUMAN EQUATION

"The Human Equation" is a good concept album, mixing heavy metal and folkish rock. The story behind is really great, the cast of guest vocalists is awesome, the music is well written and well produced for the most part... but there are too many cheezy and poppish parts to make it a masterpiece. Still an excellent addition to any prog collection though.

"Day One: Vigil" is a short minimalistic intro with gentle vocals - just here to introduce the story with the characters Wife and Best Friend. "Day Two: Isolation" is the song that introduces almost all other characters - the music is a mix of Dream Theater and Pink Floyd, with mellow passages (Fear/Love) along a more heavy main theme (Me/Reason/Passion/Pride). "Day Three: Pain" introduces two more characters - Agony (Devon Graves, great voice, surprisingly gentle for emotions such as pain and agony) and Rage (Devin Townsend, mixing rock, power and extreme vocals in a nice fashion, but his style of singing seems really out of place here). "Day Four: Mystery" starts with acoustic guitar and synths and is mainly a Wife/Best Friend duet again - very pleasant. "Day Five: Voices" starts (and ends) with a cheezy folkish part - the duet Magnus Ekwall/James LaBrie (Pride/Me) doesn't give its full potential, as it will later on on "Day Fourteen: Pride" - but the middle part (Reason/Love/Fear) is one of the best moment of the album, in particular the part where Mikael Åkerfeldt sings. "Day Six: Childhood" is a very quiet song for its most part with impressive vocal performances by characters Agony, Me and Fear, just interrupted in the middle by a rocking guitar solo. "Day Seven: Hope" is a cheezy duet Best Friend/Me sounding like those Pink Floyd songs on "The Wall" that I don't like at all - probably one of the songs I like least on this album. "Day Eight: School" starts with quiet verses from Fear/Agony/Me, interrupted by brutal and irritating choruses by Rage (damn this part sounds horrible on this song) - then the song becomes heavier with the more powerful voices of Pride and Reason. "Day Nine: Playground" is an enjoyable short instrumental - typical mellow Ayreon stuff with keyboards and acoustic guitar for the most part. "Day Ten: Memories" is the other song I don't like on this album at all - very cheezy and poppish, even the melody sounds out of tone. "Day Eleven: Love" is another poppish song, except for the choruses where Passion and Pride sing.

Part II of "The Human Equation" starts with eleven little tracks - a little trick to ensure that "Day Twelve: Trauma" starts as track #12. "Day Twelve: Trauma" is the centerpiece of this second part - it starts like a traditional heavy metal song with the voices of Passion and Agony, but then turns into pure doom metal with Fear/Reason (Mikael Åkerfeldt even uses a mix of clean and growled vocals here). "Day Thirteen: Sign" starts as a beautiful ballad - Heather Findlay really has a great voice - but after three minutes or so the song turns into some Rocky Horror Picturesque stuff when Wife and Best Friend start to sing. "Day Fourteen: Pride" is probably the heaviest song on the album with the three most powerful voices singing (Me/Pride/Reason). "Day Fifteen: Betrayal" follows then with a totally opposite style - quieter with the more frail voices of Fear and Agony, and more symphonic with the operatic Passion and Reason. "Day Sixteen: Loser" is a folkish song - some kind of celtic rock with a lot of folkish instruments - that ends up brutally with Devin Townsend's raging vocals. "Day Seventeen: Accident?" is a beautiful power ballad, one of my favorite songs on this album. "Day Eighteen: Realization" is mainly a folkish instrumental with again a lot of instruments, with just a small sung part in the end (I don't really like that part compared to the rest of the song). "Day Nineteen: Disclosure" is another nice power ballad with mainly the female characters in front (Wife/Love/Passion). "Day Twenty: Confrontation" is the grand finale of the album - almost all characters return to conclude the story, with a melody a bit like Queensryche's "Eyes of a Stranger", a mix of quiet and heavy parts.

Rating: 71/100 (part I - 3 stars) + 86/100 (part II - 4 stars)