An interesting note about this – I’m pretty sure Blaze got the idea to do an album trilogy because he was asked to sing on a track for Geoff Tate’s Operation: Mindcrime project, which was doing a (you guessed it) three-album story concept at the time.
Tate’s Operation: Mindcrime albums were all recorded around the same time in late 2014 (including Blaze’s guest appearance), but were released yearly afterward:
- The Key (2015)
- Resurrection (2016)
- The New Reality (2017)
The song Blaze appeared on (along with Tim “Ripper” Owens) was “Taking On The World”, from the second album Resurrection:
Blaze, Tate, and Owens even went on a tour together in 2016 called “Trinity” (which was especially sad because that was originally going to be the name of a project including Bruce, Rob Halford, and Tate that would have included songs like “A Tyranny Of Souls” and “The One You Love To Hate”, with vocal parts for all three of them; but instead it turned into a tour with the ex-singers of those three bands instead!)
Anyway, given Blaze’s participation in Tate’s project in late 2014, I’m pretty sure that’s what inspired him to do Infinite Entanglement as a trilogy, and then he toured the first album on the Trinity tour to bring it full circle.
By the way, those Operation: Mindcrime albums are actually pretty interesting. Kind of uneven, but generally good, and the story’s interesting too. The music is definitely not metal, though – it’s occasionally heavy prog-rock that gets more synthy as the albums progress.