Perhaps, it’s a little bit late but such delayed occurrences are par for the course, so it’s not exactly two decades later that AYREON‘s “The Human Equation” will see an expanded edition yet the remixed three-CD set which is to appear on April 18th should arrive close enough to the date to be considered a 20th anniversary reissue. Naturally, while the refreshed sonics of the original two discs can reveal previously hidden details of what Arjen Anthony Lucassen and his kindred spirits presented all those years ago, most of fans would like to hear the additional material on the third platter.
Most of the eleven tracks gathered there are cuts which could be found on singles that accompanied the album back then, including the covers of LED ZEPPELIN, THE BEATLES and Alice Cooper classics, yet a couple of numbers seem to have come from archival cracks they fell into at the time of the “Equation” emergence, so it will be nice to have them all in one place. Surely, it’s easy to bemoan the omitting of video material from the DVD part of old DVD Special and Deluxe editions, but one can only hope to get a fully comprehensive package somewhere in the future.
CD 1:
1. Day One: Vigil
2. Day Two: Isolation
3. Day Three: Pain
4. Day Four: Mystery
5. Day Five: Voices
6. Day Six: Childhood
7. Day Seven: Hope
8. Day Eight: School
9. Day Nine: Playground
10. Day Ten: Memories
11. Day Eleven: Love
CD 2:
1. Day Twelve: Trauma
2. Day Thirteen: Sign
3. Day Fourteen: Pride
4. Day Fifteen: Betrayal
5. Day Sixteen: Loser
6. Day Seventeen: Accident?
7. Day Eighteen: Realization
8. Day Nineteen: Disclosure
9. Day Twenty: Confrontation
CD 3:
1. August Fire
2. No Quarter
3. Space Oddity
4. Day Six – Childhood (acoustic version)
5. How You Gonna See Me Now
6. Bloopers
7. Untitled Instrumental
8. When I’m Sixty-Four
9. Loser (Star One version)
10. No Quarter (alt. version)
11. Back 2 Me (dance mix)