Weezer's long-lost rock opera about space, 'Songs from the Black Hole,' is finally seeing the light of day -- kind of. A group of die-hard Weezer fans has released a recreation of the album, which was originally slated to be the follow-up to Weezer's 1994 self-titled debut (aka 'The Blue Album') but was abandoned during recording. The band folded some of it into their actual sophomore disc, 'Pinkerton,' and if much of 'Black Hole' sounds familiar, that's why.

Working under the name Operation Space Opera, the collective consulted various source materials to to record the 27-track 'Songs from the Black Hole' as best they could. According to the group's Bandcamp page, about a dozen different musicians worked on the album. As they explain in an accompanying note:

This is a "Songs From The Black Hole" recreation, recorded from scratch, which incorporates material from all the released Rivers Cuomo demos, the full band Weezer demos for the project, the Pinkerton recordings, and information from the many pages of notes, lyrics and sheet music in "The Pinkerton Diaries" which was released last year (as well as a small amount of our own creative input). A bunch of people worked on this over a long period of time.

All songs are credited to Cuomo, with the additional "creative input" mentioned above added to just three tracks. Operation Space Opera seems to be led by Jack Allen, who plays acoustic and electric guitar, bass, piano, synth, organ, drum and additional percussion on the album, in addition to providing backing vocals. Allen also mixed and mastered the disc.

'Songs from the Black Hole' can be streamed below for free, but as the band says, "We recommend downloading rather than streaming if you want the full effect of the seamless transitions from one song to the next." Download the album in its entirety here.