Metal Reviews

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100/100. I'm sorry but I stopped reading right there.

Lols @ Queensryche and Pink Floyd being namedropped in the same sentence. No, and no again.

100/100? just ridiculous.

Ayreon is my favourite "band" or whatever you want to call it and I would never give this anywhere near 100/100.

The Final Experiment and his Migrator albums are his best work and are closest to a perfect album that he has come. The issue with The Theory of Everything is that it doesn't necessarily do anything new, Arjen is constantly copying himself on this one. Plus, it is obvious that he is out of ideas and the storyline is evidence of this. There is no denying that the story is very stupid. Even the characters are named simply "rival" and "girl".

Despite all this, the music is as always good, but nowhere near 100/100. The main problem with the music is the lyrics/singing. First of all, the lyrics are often really lame and presented with no subtlety at all: "Rival: Oh no, I can't believe you're falling for this loser. Oh no, I thought you knew that I am so much cooler" plus, because the lyrics are constructed like this, the singing becomes really tedious to listen to at times, it's like watching the film version of Les Miserables with it's half-spoken, half-sung dialogue. To be fair, Ayreon has always been somewhat like this, but never to such extremes.

Anyway, I'd rate this album something like 7 or 8 out of 10.

Lyrics have never been Arjen's strong point, have they? I haven't heard this yet, but I think the man tries too much - his brand of prog could probably come over much better if it was in Dream Theater-sized bites rather than making every album an Epic Tale...

Cool, a new Ayreon album. I'll check it out, I love the Migrator albums and thought 01011001 was very solid (has it been five years already?). A bit put off by the perfect score but I guess that must mean it's good, which can only be a good thing. And any album with a perfect score must have an album of the year tag :)

Good album. Not sure if it's 10/10 good though, but that don't really matter.

It sure does when writing a review with the aim of garnering interest among neutral or slightly skeptical readers. 100/100 screams that the reviewer is highly biased towards the band and thus not giving the album a complete picture. I just wrote in the Ruins of Beverast thread about a top 2-3 album heard this year and yet only gave it an 85, while acknowledging several flaws.

Yes, I agree with you, of course it's not 100 percent fair to neutral readers. What I meant was, just the rating on it's own, doesn't matter to most of us here.

an ayreon album named 'the theory of everything' getting 100/100 cracked me up. It's all so fitting.

Agree completely, except for me, Actual Fantasy (re-visited) and Human Equation are my favorites. A friend of mine is a huge Arjen fan, and pretty much said what you said, almost word for word. His favorite is Into the Electric Castle. Seems that no matter what Ayreon album is your favorite, its pretty obvious that The Theory of Everything is never going to be among them. A pity, considering the talent put together for this one.

Lets hope Arjen can convince himself to change the gameplan in the future. And also get Daniel Heiman to sing for him. Goran Edman too.

I absolutely love his album 1011001 but I haven't probably listened to any of the others. Will definitely give this a chance as soon as possible!

Uh oh. Ayreon's gotten too popular; time for everyone to poop on it.

Listen, Ayreon is Aryeon. Like Motorhead is Motorhead, and AC/DC is AC/DC. You know what you're going to get: less than brilliant lyrics, a tepid concept, and fantastic songs. The latter of which is most important.

Arjen is an amazing talent and writes equally amazing music. This album is another great one in a long line of great ones. It is, however, not perfect. A 100/100 is a bit much. My biggest complaint is that the songs are broken up into such short segments. I like to listen to music on shuffle and a concept album broken up into short songs is annoying.

Personal complaint, though. I give this one an 80/100.

I'm late to this game. Otherwise this album would have made my year end list. The emotion conveyed in this story is tremendous. The story is quite compelling and the musicianship is phenomenal. I am quite taken by it. I'm not ashamed to say that some parts of this album brought me to tears. It really is that good. If profound conceptual storytelling is your thing, this album will blow you away.

Fuck this band is so good.

I have all of their albums on top of my guitar hero controls, ACDC shirt, and man they just inspire me to write some of the most technical and over the top shredfests evaR!

I fucking love these guys, FUCK THE METAL elitists that think music should have memorability and songs that don't stretch on for 15 minutes!

I found your parody post typically amusing, but 15 minute songs appear to be the opposite of what they do on this album. 42 tracks over the course of 90 minutes sounds more in line with a Napalm death compilation album.

I honestly don't know what every one is talking about with the lyrics being anything less than brilliant. I'm pretty heavily emotionally invested in the "old" storyline and have been lazy about getting through the entire thing myself 10010101 was one of the best stories an album has ever told, frankly. I think the lyrics are fine. I've been putting off listening to this record because it isn't the classic storyline, but the story line that is in it sound intriguing and I'm interested now.