So, does anyone listen to artists such as Avantasia and Ayreon?

They are prog/Power metal "supergroups", which mainly consists of 1 person who creates concept/story albums which features a long list of Who is Who in the metal world.

Take Ayreon's upcoming album, which has 11 different main singers:



Example of Avantasia:

Some great pieces of music in the Ayreon video, but the whole thing comes across a bit disjointed...as IMHO a lot of these story-telling concept albums tend to do.
The Avantasia track sounds like a Jim Steinman production...and there's nothing wrong with that!

EAF331 MadDog, I always enjoy your posts on this stuff. One of the bands that you introduced me to is Therion, which is also lead by 1 person and has been around a fair while.
In that time, they have produced albums of pure genius (Vovin, Lemuria, Sirius B) and albums that I can't get into at all (Secret of the runes, Gothic Kabbalah, Fleur de mal).
Anyway, Ayreon and Avantasia may fall into this category so I need to do some youtubing to find out.

I guess Pain of Salvation qualify? They only put out concept albums of which the first 4 or so are excellent. Another good concept album is Testimony of the Ancients by Pestilence.