This article may not meet the notability guideline for music. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for redirection, merge or ultimately deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.
This article has been tagged since April 2008.
On January 25, 2008, both Ayreon’s and Avantasia’s latest albums were released (01011001 and The Scarecrow, respectively).[1] The press soon started to create speculations on the possibility of them being rivals and which album would be more successful. When asked about this, Arjen Anthony Lucassen (mastermind behind Ayreon) stated that he was mad at Tobias Sammet, head of Avantasia, because Tobias managed to have Alice Cooper, of whom Arjen is a great fan, to perform on his last Avantasia album. Coincidently, Tobias was also mad at Arjen because he had Bruce Dickinson performing on his Ayreon album Universal Migrator Part 2: Flight of the Migrator. To "put some fuel on the fire created by the press", as Arjen stated on his website[2], they decided to record a song together. Initially, the EP was to be titled "Ayreon vs. Avantasia."
