Ayreon - The Source album review

The best of Prog you can get this month

By Jo Kendall
( Classic Rock )
published
Cover art for Ayreon - The Source album

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Where to begin with Arjen Lucassen’s latest? Well, everything plus a retro-futuristic kitchen sink is thrown at opening track The Day That The World Breaks Down, 12 minutes and 30 seconds of prog/folk/ metal/classical madness that sets a marker for this 17-track sci-fi saga set six billion years ago. It’s high-functioning melodrama featuring everyone, from James LaBrie to Guthrie Govan to Floor Jansen.

Jo Kendall
Jo Kendall

Jo is a journalist, podcaster, event host and music industry lecturer with 23 years in music magazines since joining Kerrang! as office manager in 1999. But before that Jo had 10 years as a London-based gig promoter and DJ, also working in various vintage record shops and for the UK arm of the Sub Pop label as a warehouse and press assistant. Jo's had tea with Robert Fripp, touched Ian Anderson's favourite flute (!), asked Suzi Quatro what one wears under a leather catsuit, and invented several ridiculous editorial ideas such as the regular celebrity cooking column for Prog, Supper's Ready. After being Deputy Editor for Prog for five years and Managing Editor of Classic Rock for three, Jo is now Associate Editor of Prog, where she's been since its inception in 2009, and a regular contributor to Classic Rock. She continues to spread the experimental and psychedelic music-based word amid unsuspecting students at BIMM Institute London, hoping to inspire the next gen of rock, metal, prog and indie creators and appreciators.