| Artist: | Ayreon |
| Title: | Into The Electric Castle |
| Label: | Transmission TM-014 |
| Length(s): | 47+57m minutes |
| Year(s) of release: | 1998 |
| Month of review: | 10/1998 |
| 1) | Welcome To The New Dimension | 3.06 |
| 2) | Isis And Osiris | 11.11 |
| 3) | Amazing Flight | 10.15 |
| 4) | Time Beyond Time | 6.05 |
| 5) | The Decision Tree (We're Alive) | 6.24 |
| 6) | Tunnel Of Light | 4.05 |
| 7) | Across The Rainbow Bridge | 6.19 |
Disc 2:
| 1) | The Garden Of Emotions | 9.41 |
| 2) | Valley Of The Queens | 2.25 |
| 3) | The Castle Hall | 5.49 |
| 4) | Tower Of Hope | 4.54 |
| 5) | Cosmic Fusion | 7.27 |
| 6) | The Mirror Maze | 6.34 |
| 7) | Evil Devolution | 6.31 |
| 8) | The Two Gates | 6.28 |
| 9) | "Forever" Of The Stars | 2.03 |
| 10) | Another Time, Another Space | 5.20 |
The voice of Peter Daltrey opens this album. The music in this short first track is cosmic. The guitar is even somewhat like the wailing ones on Wayne's War of the Worlds to which I guess this album can be most likened. However instead of the disco music that forms in some sense the backbone of Wayne's opus, the backbone here comes from hardrock. We move then into the first vocal track in which we hear Fish and Sharon den Adel. This first track introduces also the vocals of the knight (Damian Wilson), the Roman (Edwin Balogh) and the Egyptian (Anneke van Giersbergen). Each of these characters interprets in her/his own way where he/she is and how he/she got here. The music on this track is most important however and the music is in fact quite varied with contrasting passages like the melodic ones for the women and the rougher ones for the men. The third part it is Fish again singing some quite sensitive parts after which we get a keyboard solo ridden and Fish returns for some prophetic words. All in all quite a good song, with as you might expect a focus on telling a story instead of being a tight composition. This is the largest difference also with the previous album, Actual Fantasy. Another large difference also is that this album had quite an updated sound and it turned out to be too high-tech for most since it sold quite a lot less than the first album. Amazing Flight is the third track, Jay van Feggelen sings the first part of this bluesy track, while Lucassen himself sings the hippy part in the necessarily spacy following passages. The second part of the track is Stardance which is nicely vocalized by the Indian. Thijs van Leer features on the Tullishly pumping Flying Colours. Edward Reekers opens the moody sounding Time Beyond Time. This song again contains some wvery whorthswhile melodies with especially some great guitar work in the middle, but some tritish keyboards just after the vocals. Fortunately the compelling melodic guitarline ends this song. Time for some acoustic guitar on The Decision Tree (we're alive) (I wonder whether Arjen took this concept of the Decision Tree from Game Theory). Slowly the pace of the song picks up as the heroic members of th crew have to decide who will die. This is quite poppy track with Fish singing and quite a lot of harmonies, but which also features some nice rollers on the drums. In Tunnel of Light we hear both some rootsy guitar, folky acoustics and long stretched vocals. This seems to be a lament for Fish who as Highlander dies in this song. The dripping of water accompanies the vocals of Daltrey on the next song, his voice turning macaber. In my opinion both]\ Damian Wilson and the Roman shine on this song, but of course they do have the right vocal lines to play with. Some heavy guitars can be found on this track alternated with the stoned out Hippy (and some tasteful additions by one of the female vocalists). Certainly the highpoint up to now.
The next disc opens with The Garden of Emotions in three parts. The first part is a bombastic one. The vocals are still quite tempered here, but aggression is in the voices of the Barbarian and the Roman as they strive for command in the next part.The third part features the intertwined vocals of the Indian, The Futureman and the Knight, where they are the voice of reason. The song seems to end powerfully but quite abruptly. A dark cello accompanies the Egyptian towards her end. A short, melancholic track. In The Castle Hall each man is confronted with the souls of everyone they killed. The Barbarian starts the vocal part in a low dark voice. also featuring the \Knight and the flute of Van Leer this is a track that ranges from dark synths to rocking flutes. We move right into the Tower Of Hope. This is a bumpy ride in fact with lots of playful keyboards. Lots of keyboards on this album in fact, much more than you might expect. Not the most interesting tracks in fact also because of the dito jazzrockish intermezzo. The clear voice of the Indian dominates I Soar On The Breeze, the first part of Cosmic Fusion, which features some menacing music. Here also we hear the voice of Death (two in fact) taking the life of the Indian. The Passing Of An Eagle contains some awfully quick keyboards by Ton Scherpenzeel. The Mirror Maze is somewhat Beatlesque. After the relative quiet of the vocal part, the song erupts into heavy guitars and lots of hammond. Nice about the second part is how the lyrics of the different vocalists are overlapping, often only in sound, not in meaning. Evil Devolution is a hazy track with the reasonable vocals of Edward Reekers on a rather waltzlike tune. Then the music turns around 180 degrees with heavy guitars and fast paced drumming. The discording guitar infusions are not that much to my liking. This also holds for the very AORish chorus to The Two Gates. Fortunately, the rest of this plodding track more than makes up for it. Strangely some of the lyrics seem to be missing here. The short "Forever" And The Starts features some Tangerine Dream sequencers. Then the story and album are closed by a retrospective of the survivors. Great sweeping violins abound on this ghostly track that has something of ELO in it.
The artwork is great, but the lyrics contain some small errors such as succomb, allience instead of succumb and alliance.