Ayreon

Ayreon is a project by Dutch composer and musician Arjen Anthony Lucassen.

Ayreon's musical style derives mostly from heavy metal and progressive rock, but combines them with genres like folk, classical and electronica to form what some call a completely new style of music. The majority of Ayreon's albums are dubbed "rock operas" because the albums contain complex storylines featuring a host of characters, each represented by a unique vocalist.

Ayreon's music is characterized by the use of traditional instruments in rock music (guitars, bass guitar, drums, synthesizers, electric organs) mixed with instruments more native to folk and classical music (i.e. mandolins, violins, violas, celli, flutes, sitars and didgeridoo). Lucassen writes the music and the lyrics, sings and plays instruments on all of the Ayreon albums, alongside many guest musicians, but the drums are played by Ed Warby most of the time, so he is considered as a member, even though he's not an official one. Arjen has said he will keep making Ayreon music until the day he loses love for music or until the day he dies. Also, when asked on the "Ask Arjen Anything" channel of communication if there will be another Ayreon album, he simply stated "Definitely".

The Biography appearing in this section is attributed to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayreon. Portions of this Biography may be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, version 3.0 or any later version, available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/. Additional terms may apply. See Wikipedia Terms of Use for details.