Nostradamus: The Fate of Man

"Nostradamus - The Fate Of Man" is the twelfth studio album by the Dutch progressive rock band Kayak released in 2005 on the SMH Recordings label. This concept-album tells the story of French doctor and seer Nostradamus, but from the viewpoint of a Flemish monk, Yves de Lessines. The (unproven) theory behind this is that Nostradamus was not the writer of his famous "Centuries". These poems were in fact written 200 years earlier by De Lessines, and they were a secret code to find the treasures of the Knights Templar. On one of his journeys, Nostradamus found the book that De Lessines wrote, and interpreted the poems in his own way, turning them into predictions. Kayak found this approach much more interesting than the usual Nostradamus-stories, and decided to take this theory as a starting point for their second rock-opera. The album is a double CD. There was also a single CD released, under the title Excerpts From Nostradamus. That CD contains 11 songs, plus "The Story Behind Nostradamus" in Dutch and English.