Bruce Dickinson in Ayreon (2000)

Forostar

Ancient Mariner
Since there are quite some new (and young) people at this forum, perhaps they didn't know that Bruce sang on a track of the Ayreon album The Universal Migrator - Part 2: Flight of the Migrator (2000).

ay_albums_um_02.jpg


The track is called "Into the Black Hole" and can be heard at this location:
http://www.ayreon.com/ayreon/ay_media/a ... k_full.mp3

Very atmospheric and Bruce at his best. He is very into it! Enjoy!

Lyrics:
Into the Black Hole

(a) The Eye of Universe

A dark sphere surrounds us
Surreal...oblivious...
In the centre of the galaxy
A hidden force has found us
Powerful...mysterious...
At the boundary of eternity

Nothing escapes, not even light
Beyond the mystical horizon
We surrender to its might
Gazing into the eye of the universe

A deep roar is sounding
Deafening...thunderous...
As if the universe were crying
My heart is pounding
Frantic...delirious...
My every nerve is dying

(b) Halo of Darkness

I hear screams of fallen souls, sad cries of agony
Within the void of this evil hole, deep inside the black

Could it be my imagination, the mirror of my fantasy?
A fear-induced hallucination
Or is there no way back from the halo of darkness?

Spirits - apparitions - misery - suffering
Horrid dreams and dire visions rising up from the black

Look away in disbelief, this cannot be happening
The end has come, I bow in grief
There is no way back from the halo of darkness

(c) The Final Door

Now silence devours us
Massive...suffocating...
The calm before the storm
Gravity overpowers us
Invincible...dominating...
And leads us through the final door

Feed me light, I'm the halo of darkness
Feel my might, I'm the eye of the universe


Other vocalists and instrumentalists on that album:

Vocalists
Andi Deris
Bruce Dickinson
Damian Wilson
Fabio Lione
Ian Parry
Lana Lane
Ralf Scheepers
Robert Soeterboek
Russell Allen
Timo Kotipelto

Instrumentalists
Arjen Lucassen
Clive Nolan
Ed Warby
Gary Wehrkamp
Keiko Kumagai
Michael Romeo
Oscar Holleman
Rene Merkelbach
 
I actually like the 1st part 'The Dream Sequencer' better. Part 2 can get a little repetitive, but it's still great. The 1st part is softer and concentrates more on melody, . It also combines a fair bit of electronica. However part 2 has some great vocalists - Bruce of course, and also Russel Allen (Symphony x).
 
My first post on this forum was about this song, that I mistakenly downloaded thinking it was For the Greater Good of God.  I got a rather harsh reply from Maverick about time travel and reposting...

But it's quite a good song.  I love the transition between the soft and heavy, and the solo is really cool.
 
That's a great album. I didn't know Bruce was on it when I first heard it - I had just gotten it based on Mav's recommendation, and was pleasantly surprised to hear Bruce. One of the nice things about that song is that it's so different from both Maiden and Bruce's solo material. The lack of drums makes his voice stand out even more.

I'm also a big fan of the companion track later on the album, "Out Of The White Hole".
 
4 things to get a more complete overview on Bruce and Ayreon:

1 from http://www.ayreon.com/ayreon/ay_bruce.html (about Bruce) Arjen explains:

My manager Harrie worked for the same management as Iron Maiden's, so at some point he had given Bruce a copy of 'Into the Electric Castle'. About 6 months later my manager asked him if he had ever listened to it, and Bruce replied that he loved it! Bruce's nickname is the Siren, which is a very good description of his voice. Compared to Maiden he sounds so different on my CD. Normally Maiden's music is faster, and he has more lyrics and less room to show off his voice. I gave him a lot of room to interpret the song and vocals. He sang the song 3 times, and I selected the best lines. During live gigs you often see Bruce putting his foot on the monitor when he needs to sing a high note. In my studio he put his foot on a little stool whenever he needed to reach a high note!
bruce_dickinson.jpg

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2
from: http://www.ayreon.com/ayreon/ay_interview_08.html -->

..I ask him how the hell he managed to get a Bruce Dickinson in his studio?

"Through my manager who met Bruce once in England. In the first instance I did not got any reaction on my proposition. During that time Bruce returned to Iron Maiden and I thought I could forget the whole thing. At a certain moment my manager got Bruce on the phone and asked if he still by any chance had some interest in Ayreon. And that he had! Party of course. After that came the tormenting way of constant calling and bargaining. Every time I thought of Dickinson I became nauseous with tension. At the last moment it all worked out. In the beginning Bruce himself was a bit nervous. You don't expect that from such a great artist. This was of course a boys dream coming true. And what do you know? Stands there in the morning changing his bed sheets. Funny huh?"
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Arjen Lucassen almost recorded a full album with Bruce alone on vocals.
Check out how this dream was blown to pieces:

3
Bruce's version: http://dmme.net/interviews/dickinson.html -->
You were involved with AYREON project. What's happened with that one?

- I'm not going to be doing anything with Arjen [Lucassen]. I did one track with him ["Into The Black Hole"], he's a very talented guy. I was thinking to do some writing with him, possibly doing an album project, but what happened was this all got out into the Internet because he released details of it - either the e-mail or something to his fan club. And all of a sudden it was all was released, that I was doing an album with Arjen. So I asked him, I said this is not true, is it you who put everything out, there's no professionalism. And he mailed me back saying, "Oh no-no-no, I'd never do anything like that", but I found out that actually he did it. So I don't have any plans to do anything with Arjen. He's talented, he has his own career, and I wish him all the success.

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4
Arjen's version  http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbe ... e=9/6/2001
-->

AYREON mastermind Arjen Lucassen (ex-BODINE, VENGEANCE) has publicly spoken out about his now-aborted project with IRON MAIDEN vocalist Bruce Dickinson, which was recently shelved under somewhat acrimonious circumstances following Dickinson's decision to pull out of the planned collaboration between the pair. According to Lucassen, “Right after the release of the last AYREON album, Universal Migrator, Bruce came to meet me during a radio interview I did in Brussels/Belgium. It was really a great gesture of him he even joined in and spoke highly of my work on the air. After that we went to a club together and we drove him back to his hotel in Antwerpen. He asked me if I would be interested to write a concept album with him. His suggestions were to base it either on Macbeth (I told him at the time JAG PANZER had already done that) or on a vampire story his friend Arthur Brown had written. Bruce told me he and his manager really liked my work. At that time, unfortunately, I couldn't commit to it because I was writing and recording the AMBEON album. About a year later, we got in touch again (I spoke on his answer phone and he called me back) and I told him I was writing a metal album. I asked him if he would be interested to sing on it because he was on the top of my list. He was really interested and suggested that it could become a Bruce Dickinson solo concept album because it would be easier to promote it that way. I finished the album instrumentally, sent it to him and he really liked it. He told me he was gonna start writing lyrics for the first 4 songs, so I finished those 4 songs with extra spacy sounds and sent them to him again. He wanted it to go into a — I quote — 'Purply, spacy, weird' direction.
...
“On the phone, [Bruce] told me that none of [his other rumored releases, i.e. Best Of…, a new solo album and the aborted TRINITY project with Rob Halford and Geoff Tate] got off the ground, so he would have the time [to do this project with me]. That was when I started to record the material for him."
...
In response to an article that ran in a Swedish magazine in which Bruce shot down any plans of working with Lucassen in the future after becoming agitated over the fact that Arjen had revealed the details of the planned project with Dickinson well before any of the work had actually taken place: “After reading [Bruce's] nasty comments about me, I sent him an e-mail to stop doing that immediately. I really had the feeling that we both believed in this project, so why this sudden hostility?! I don't want him to create a situation in which we start throwing mud at each other in the press. And I wrote him that I personally think this mud-throwing would be quite unnecessary, and besides that very childish, unprofessional and furthermore a waste of time. Unfortunately, again, he didn't answer me... And he didn't send me my CDRs with my new songs back either after I've asked him several times.”
 
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