Ayreon - "Timeline"

Ayreon - Timeline
2008, Inside Out

Disc One:
1. Prologue
2. The Awareness
3. Eyes of Time
4. The Accusation
5. Sail Away to Avalon
6. Listen to the Waves
7. Actual Fantasy
8. Abbey of Synn
9. Computer Eyes
10. Back on Planet Earth
11. Isis and Osiris
12. Amazing Flight

Disc Two
1. The Garden of Emotion
2. The Castle Hall
3. The Mirror Maze
4. The Two Gates
5. The Shooting Company of Captain Frans B. Cocq
6. Dawn of a Million Souls
7. And the Druids Turned to Stone
8. Into the Black Hole
9. The First Man on Earth
10. Day Two: Isolation

Disc Three
1. Day Three: Pain
2. Day Six: Childhood
3. Day Twelve: Trauma
4. Day Sixteen: Loser
5. Day Seventeen: Accident?
6. Age of Shadows
7. Ride the Comet
8. The Fifth Extinction
9. Waking Dreams
10. The Sixth Extinction
11. Epilogue: The Memory Remains

Special thanks go out to my friend Uvulapie who sent me this collection. We had a conversation in which Ayreon came up and he said he had this box set and I could have it if I wanted it. Well, of course I said "yes!" A few days later Timeline appeared in the mail! Class act, that Uvulapie. So anyway, Timeline is essentially an Ayreon retrospective with songs culled from all six releases. There's a decent amount of songs from each album. I can't really complain about the track choices because I don't think I've ever listened to an Ayreon album with a "bad" song on it. Though with this collection an attempt was made to give the listener an overview of the Ayreon story arc and I don't think they did too bad a job. The set also comes with a nice full color booklet with lyrics, liner notes, and other assorted tidbits. There's a poster with the cover art on the front and the story arc timeline on the back. Then there's the DVD which is a collection of Ayreon, Star One, and Stream of Passion videos. It's fun to watch for sure.

There's only one complaint: as awesome as this package is, an avid fan will have just about everything on here. The only new song is "Epilogue: The Memory Remains" (featuring the vocalist for Arjen's Guilt Machine project) and I don't actually like it that much. Some of the videos also appear on Star One's Live From Earth DVD and Stream of Passion's Live in the Real World. There are some other exclusive videos but the bulk of this set is stuff a fan would probably already have. So, as a free gift from a friend Timeline is an awesome package and well worth having in my collection. However, I don't quite know if it's worth the thirty or forty bucks it would cost to have it new.

Useless Fact: Ayreon.... Arjen.... Ayreon... Arjen... OH... they do sound awfully similar don't they? How did I not pick up on that earlier?