Universal Migrator Part 2: Flight of the Migrator is the fifth album from Ayreon, a progressive metal/rock opera project by Dutch musician Arjen Anthony Lucassen, released in 2000.
The musical styles found on Flight of the Migrator contrast its counterpart The Dream Sequencer, illustrating a wild, raucous journey through the tumultuous and chaotic reaches of outer space. In keeping with the setting of the story, the album's tone is much heavier, exuding a powerful, guitar-driven metal feel throughout.
Both albums were released simultaneously, sold well and were received positively. In 2004, Lucassen moved to a new record label - Inside Out Music - and with this move came re-issues of all the previous Ayreon releases, including The Dream Sequencer. The special edition re-issue merged both albums into a single release, titled Universal Migrator: Parts I & II. The album was also released on vinyl in December 2012.
As Universal Migrator had enough content to form a two-CD album, Lucassen decided to sell each disc as a separate release. He believed his fans to be fundamentally divided into two groups by genre of choice, being either progressive rock or heavy metal fans. The Dream Sequencer was meant to appeal to the prog enthusiasts, and Flight of the Migrator to the metal fans.
Plot background
Flight of the Migrator continues the story of the final living human being, the colonist on Mars, and his decision to go even further back in time. Using the Dream Sequencer machine, he travels all the way back to just before the Universe was formed, theoretically before the Big Bang, when there was nothing but chaos. The colonist observes the creation of the very first soul, known as the Universal Migrator. It is from this soul that all others are formed, through a division of the original soul. Each resulting soul then travels off into the Universe to bring life in some form to the planet they inhabit.
The colonist follows the soul bound for Earth, as it travels through countless astronomical entities, such as quasars, pulsars, supernovas, eventually entering a black hole, traveling through a wormhole, and coming out the other side through a white hole directed towards the Solar System. The colonist's ambitious time travel subsequently overloads the Dream Sequencer, resulting in his death while hypnotized by the machine; however, his eternal self receives a message from the Migrator: "Eternity lies before you. You are the new Migrator!"
Track analysis, historical notes and technical information
Chaos
The colonist travels back in time to before the Big Bang. The digitalised voices on this song were provided both by Lana Lane and Erik Norlander. Norlander also performs a synthesizer solo and Arjen Lucassen provides a guitar solo.
AllMusic reviewer Glenn Astarita felt that Flight of the Migrator wasn't as good as its counterpart, saying that "Lucassen's applied concepts and compositional acumen fare much better on the highly recommended 'The Dream Sequencer'."