Into the Electric Castle is a great album. It is basically just lots of fun and really well put together, and after listening to many other attempts at this kind of thing (fantasy/sci-fi prog epics) by lesser talents, I gain more respect for how easy this album flows and all of its details. The story is corny, but not idiotic or stale, and also doesn't take itself too seriously, yet the singers and instrumentalists utterly commit themselves to their roles, which makes a lot of the lyrical content and storyline palatable. The successful balancing of the elements of story, performance, and song structures is what makes ItEC kind of a rarity--everything seems perfectly in its place and there really aren't any moments where the album loses focus, not even the extended proggy instrumental bits, in which I find new elements with each listen (this last time, the synth/guitar duet at the end of "Cosmic Fusion" I had never taken notice of before--great bit).