Well, like I said, I've already listened to 90% of Ayreon's discography, but it was on shuffle so none of the names or albums they are on really stuck.
I'll definitely post my impressions about those others when I get around to them, though... thanks.
I'm pretty sure Ayreon's entire discography is concept albums. Don't just listen to them on shuffle!
For Ayreon I like Out of the White Hole, The New Migrator, Loser, Dawn of a Million Souls, My House on Mars, Temple of the Cat, Comatose, Waking Dreams, and The Sixth Extinction. I haven't gotten to his older stuff yet. I'm sure Web of Lies is his worst song though.
Count me as another guy who's only really into progressive metal and power metal. It's hard to find metal bands with good singers.
My favourite band is Dream Theater. They're just great. But even then they have a lot of songs I don't really like.
If any of you are into Dream Theater you should look into the band's side projects, they're all really good too.
Liquid Tension Experiment is Petrucci, Portnoy, Jordan Rudess, with Tony Levin on bass. They made two insrumental albums with a few ridiculously good songs. Biaxident, Universal Mind, When the Water Breaks, Acid Rain, Osmosis, Kindred Spirits, and a few others.
Petrucci's solo album Suspended Animation is pretty good. I LOVE Animate-Inanimate, and I like Lost Without You, Tunnel Vision, and Curve as well.
Neal Morse has Portnoy as his drummer, and Jordan Rudess was a guess keyboardist on his Question Mark album. He also has a lot of really good songs, although they are totally Christian I'm an atheist and I like them anyways. The Door, The Conflict, The Separated Man, Author of Confusion, The Temple of the Living God, In the Fire, and Help Me/The Spirit and the Flesh are all classics in my mind.
Platypus is a really solid band with Myung on bass. I'm not sure I'd really call them metal though, but I'm not really good at defining genres. Their songs are pretty catchy and if you get bored of band members soloing for three minutes each per song then you'll probably find Platypus a breath of fresh air.
James LaBrie's solo album Elements of Persuasion is also surprisingly good. Drained, Smashed, Crucify, Slightly Out of Reach, plus a few other really strong songs. The band he put together is pretty **** good and is basically a more mainstream version of Dream Theater.