Sometimes I hear a song, and I don’t even realize it’s a cover. Then when I do, I often check out the original too. I kinda trust the artists I listen to, so if they thought a song worthy of covering, then I might like the original too.

There are a few songs like that, that led me to discover older artists I hadn’t known about. One of the first such cover I remember is Helloween’s Fast as a shark. It’s originally a song by the likewise German, and even more ancient metal band Accept. They’ve been around since ’68! Nonetheless, I only found out about them when I heard Helloween’s cover. After that, I had some of their albums in my library for a good while.

Even bigger a success (at least from my point of view) is HammerFall’s cover of Ravenlord. It’s originally a Stormwitch song. Much like Accept, Stormwitch is an older band from the German metal scene that I didn’t know about. When I realized Ravenlord’s a cover, they were actually enjoying some renewed attention, possibly thanks to that very cover. At this point I’m listening to Stormwitch about as much as HammerFall – admittedly not as much as I used to, but they’re still present!

I really loved Ayreon’s 01011001. It was such an overwhelming experience with great musical execution of deep topics. After songs like Connect the Dots, i guess it’s understandable that I had high expectations for The Theory of Everything.

While there are 42 songs in total on the two discs (what a smart answer that is to life, the universe and everything), the almost-two hours of progressive metal left me without any real impressions. It was there – it was playing – then it was over. Lucassen himself said that it was meant to be “less heavy and more instrumental than 01011001” and sure it is much more instrumental. My problem is that if you want to thin out the overwhelming lyrical depth that characterized Y (01011001 is the code for Y) and make it “more instrumental” then there would be a need to replace that attractive force with something on the instrumental side. That is something that the Theory of Everything fails to do.

It’s still a good prog metal album, but it is nothing compared to Y.