"I need to live life like some people never will"
Ah, Dream Theater... People usually divide into two different groups about that band. Some people say that they are great songwriters and an absolutely unique progressive metal band. The others say that they are just ordinary cheesy metal band that tries to be progressive and copy everything from the giants of metal and prog. As for me, I clearly belong to the first group. I love this band. Just love them. I do admit that they aren’t original at all and they built their entire career on milking the same prog-metallic vibe, but originality and diversity aren’t the factors I listen to the music for. Though, I can’t clearly explain what I listen to the music for, as I can’t explain why I love Dream Theater. Maybe because they are awesome musicians with quite probably the best drummer and guitarist since the 70’s. Maybe because I love 80% of their songs. Maybe because I simply first got into this band when I was really deep into progressive rock. I don’t know. I just love them, that’s it. So if you are looking for an objective reviews, don’t read further, please. These reviews are very subjective.
OK, so about the line-up. They started in 1986 with John Petrucci (guitars), Mike Portnoy (drums), John Myung (bass), Kevin Moore (keyboards) and Chris Collins (vocals). They recorded some demos, then Collins left and they took Charlie Dominici instead of him. After a recording of their first album, When Dream And Day Unite, Dominici left and they picked up James LaBrie to sing. After release of Awake in 1994, Kevin Moore left and Derek Sherinian was hired to play keyboards. He left in 1998, so they took Jordan Rudess. That’s all about line-up changes.
Oh, and one more thing: if you like listening to music because of lyrics, Dream Theater might be one of your least favourite bands ever.
- AWAKE
- METROPOLIS, PART TWO : SCENES FROM A MEMORY
- SIX DEGREES OF INNER TURBULANCE
Fans often seem to hate this album for no obvious reasons. Ok, there IS an obvious reason – Charlie Dominici vocals. The guy sounds like Geddy Lee from Rush mixed with David Surkamp from Pavolov’s Dog. If these names don’t tell anything to you, well, Charlie sounds like a dumb castrate. Plus, he screams and wails with his awfully high voice, so in pieces he sounds even worse than Billy Corgan or someone else. Anyway, his vocals are enjoyable sometimes and they are actually very easy to get used to. Moreover, if you can forgive these guys the total lack of vocal abilities, you’ll get a really good metal product in result.
All over the album you can hear the band’s main influences. It’s certainly Rush (in riffs, keyboard tone and some instrumental passages), Metallica (obviously, many of these riffs are just some kind of Metallica rip-offs), Yes (heck, these guys got a lot of epics and jamming that remind me of someone) and in softer moments they sound quite close to Genesis. At all, they are just what you can expect from a classy third generation prog band (or “neo-prog” band) – almost no originality, but a lot of good music. Seriously! Even from the beginning of their career, Dream Theater could great songs. For example, the opener, an awesome metal epic “A Fortune In Lies”, is arguably the best song on here and it’s also one of the finest example of Dream Theater playing almost pure metal. Riff is catchy, middle section is technically perfect and everything is at least cool. Long proggy jam “Ytse Jam” is the other fantastic number. It is almost unmemorable, in fact, but it is VERY powerful and really exciting. Every time I play it, it always makes me listen to this one to the end.
“Afterlife” is yet another good number. It begins like a strong pop-metal song, but then that guitar/keyboard interplay goes into and you know you love this song. And the closing “Only A Matter Of Time” is the other powerful jam that has maybe the best melody on here and certainly the best playing. For example, Mike Portnoy nearly destroys his drum kit. Keith Moon, you better watch your back!
Unfortunately, apart from those four songs, I can’t point out another outstanding number. The main flaws on the album are dumb pop-metal of ‘Status Seeker” (with an awful, cheesy chorus that irritates the shit out of me) and unmemorable metal epic “Light Fuse And Get Away”. “The Ones Who Help To Set The Sun” has dark keyboard into, but the song isn’t really worthy, you know. “The Killing Hand” has a great acoustic part, but it’s not very interesting. There are some good melodies, but the song really passes me by like nine minutes of nothing. It’s not bad, though.
So it’s When Dream And Day Unite – somewhat underrated album that is certainly worth your attention. If you like Dream Theater, this is a must, if you not... well, think for yourself. It’s a good album, but it’s clearly no suited for everyone around. I maybe wouldn’t rate it THAT high if it wasn’t the first Dream Theater album I have ever bought and it introduced me to this band. Go get it someday, but I’m sure you have a lot of other things to do before that.
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Shortly after release of When Dream And Day Unite, Charlie Dominici left the band, and was replaced by James LaBrie – quite a weak singer, but, at least, he’s got memorable tone and can give a good emotional performance if you want it. Plus, he fits in the band after all these years and by now (2003, if you are interested) he became a part of Dream Theater sound. As for Dream Theater, they didn’t appear in studio until the late 1991, but it gave them enough time for working on the new material and rehearsing it. So they had a lot of material for the new album, including a huge, 20-minutes long epic “A Change Of Seasons” which will later appear on the EP at the same name, because, for some reason, the band didn’t include it on this album or the next one called Awake. But they did have put other song on the record.
The only problem with these eight songs that at least three of them suck horribly. The band decided to enter to the sissy hard-rock territory, so that’s why “Another Day” and “Surrounded” and “Pull Me Under” are awful. The former is a terribly cheesy pop ballad with a terrible sax solo (!!!) in the middle. “ Surrounded” is the other ballad, but this time it is keyboard-dominated and even cheesier. And it completely lacks any kind of melody. Finally, “Pull Me Under” is 8 minutes of horrible hard pop with pseudo-emotional chorus and an awful intro that goes to nowhere and just have no reason to exist. These three songs are arguably the worst points in the entire band’s career, so you can safely pass them by when listening to the album without expecting to miss something.
However, there are three songs on this album that can be ranked among the best stuff Dream Theater have ever done. “Metropolis, Part 1” and “Learning To Fly” are both long epics (the first one lasts for 9 minutes and the second one for 11), but they fucking rule. “Metropolis” has a lot of little awesome melodies crossed with the main melody and it works. Plus, the opening intro and the middle part are maybe the best Dream Theater instrumental sections. And have you heard those keyboards? From beautiful playing in the intro to speedy passages everywhere, Kevin Moore did his best on here. “Learning To Live” is built just like “Metropolis”, but vocal parts in that song are better (with cool and memorable chorus), and the jam in the middle is so much powerful and much more well-structured. And it has a little acoustic part! I love it! And a prelude to this epic called “Wait For Sleep” is a cute little song.
But my personal favourite is “Take The Time”. It has even better vocal parts and chorus than “Learning To Live” and the middle part is better than anything on here. Especially that cool riff John Petrucci plays all the way through. It is a rip-off of that riff from Kansas’ “Carry On Wayward Son”, but who cares? Not me.
There’s a one song I haven’t mention yet – “Under A Glass Moon”. It’s a good song, but it’s not something outstanding. The guitarwork is impressive and the melody is kinda cute, but stupid lyrics are awful. “Nervous flashlights scan my dreams”?! “Tasting memories running from my eyes”?! What?! It’s really awful, you know.
OK, so that’s all about this album, I guess. Fans overrate it, but does it mean that it is bad? No. In fact, it’s quite good. Forget “Another Day” or something like that, and turn on “Take The Time”.
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Who needs Dream Theater releasing live record with “Pull Me Under”, “Surrounded” and the deadly boring version of “The Killing Hand”? Well, surely not me. Especially since the mentioned songs take half of the running time of this CD – it’s an EP, for God’s sake! Anyway, this EP has the band that kicks anyone’s ass with its’ tight and interesting playing, and the rendition of “Metropolis” isn’t bad at all. Seven minutes of John Petrucci soloing in “Bombay Vindaloo” aren’t bad either and “A Fortune In Lies” kinda rocks. Still, “The Killing Hand”, as I said, isn’t great and only interesting because it’s LaBrie who sings this song. And “Pull Me Under” and ‘Surrounded” always sucked for me. Thank Lord that didn’t bring “Another Day” on here.
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So that’s Dream Theater I really like! The great prog metal band finally arrives on here and produces one of the finest albums of 90’s – 70+ minutes of fantastic heavy metal. I don’t give it a perfect rating (heck, I don’t even give it a 9.5*, if that matters), because I feel that there is some filler on here and the whole pomposity of these guys isn’t something I can really dig. Still, it’s the finest Dream Theater album with Kevin Moore and maybe their second finest ever.
Awake opens with the drum intro of “6:00” which turns out to be extremely complex hard-rocking song with very strong melody and memorable chorus (That “Melody walks through the door/And memory flies out the window” lines will stuck in your head even after the firs listening). “Caught In A Web” is more of the same, but it’s a great song too. And it has yet another cool vocal hook! The way James screams “DOES THIS VOICE THE WOUNDS OF YOUR SOUL?!” is fantastic.
“Innocence Faded” comes next. I’ve got twisted feelings about this song, you know. It has one of the best melodies on the whole album and John Petrucci plays one of the best guitar in his life, but the chorus is awfully cheesy and sweety to my ears, and the song itself doesn’t deserve its’ six minutes running time for sure. OK, let it be passable inoffensive filler.
And then comes 21 minutes of “A Mind Beside Itself” suite. It has three parts and they are tracked as three different songs on the CD and the band itself doesn’t usually perform all three parts together, but some people can consider it as their first (released) “side-long”. But I don’t, because the first two songs are clearly big multi-part suites and they all have no musical or lyrical connection. Come on – Dream Theater just pulled them all together because they want to seem more “proggy”!
Anyway, the first part of this “suite”, “Erotomania”, is my favourite Dream Theater instrumental. It’s just a big and well-done complex “jam” (they don’t really jam on here, but what can I say else?). It’s clearly the peak of playing of all the guys (except for LaBrie, of course). Then “Voices” comes – a great, massive 10-minutes progressive rock epic that is one of the best epics ever done by the band. How can’t you be hooked with that “VOICES DISCUUUUUUSING ME!” scream James does? And then, the closing part of the “suite”, “The Silent Man” is a real nice and catchy acoustic pop song. Quite untypical for Dream Theater, but it adds something to their diversity factor.
“The Mirror” is awesome. It opens with almost trash-metal intro and then goes into a standard metal song with an amazing, infectious melody. “Lie” is somewhat similar, but it bores quickly. James LaBrie demonstrates he can do something instead of cocky singing, though. But the next song, “Lifting Shadows Of A Dream”, is bad. Awful and cheesy ballad that has some kind of melody that Backstreet Boys can use for any of their songs. Blame it on John Myung – he penned it, after all.
“Scarred” runs for eleven minutes, but never bores me and is really exciting all the way through. It is almost unhummable, of course, but while listening you will never be bored for sure. Plus, the opening vocal part is arguably the finest moment on the whole album, so you can get something.
Finally, there is the last track on here, “Space-Dye Vest”. Fully written by Kevin Moore (the only song on Dream Theater album that isn’t credited to “Dream Theater”), it works amazingly with an awesome hard piano, some spacey, electronic sounds all over and absolutely gorgeous, dramatic melody. Isn’t that a cool closer for such great album?
Oh, and the album booklet has the hilarious photo of the band recording something in studio, and both James LaBrie and Kevin Moore wear short pants!!! I’m serious! If the music isn’t enough to buy this album for you, be sure to get it only because of that photo.
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Right after the Awake tour, Kevin Moore left the band to begin his solo project called Chroma Key, so the new keyboardist, Derek Sherinian joined to the band. At the same time, Dream Theater finally began to record that epic called “A Change Of Seasons” that was written in the process of Images And Words sessions. Some parts were re-written, some parts were added, some were thrown out, some lyrics were re-written, and, finally, we got the epic that runs for 23 minutes and consists of seven different parts. The band did record it and released on one huge EP with five covers of different songs, recorded on tour with Kevin Moore. But I’ll talk about them later, let me see what’s the centerpiece of the album is all about.
“A Change Of Seasons” is an awesome track, certainly one of the best Dream Theater epics ever (second only to “Home”) and one of the best track ever. It opens with a terrific acoustic intro of the first part, “The Crimson Sunrise”, with later turns into some kind of instrumental prelude. The next part, “Innocence”, is a little catchy pop song with a memorable chorus, but, overall, it’s the weakest part of the song. “Carpe Diem” is a ballad, and a good one, with a gorgeous arrangement all over it. “The Darkest Of Winters” is the band’s most accurate and simply perfect instrumental moment ever, beating even “Erotomania”. “Another World” is angry, but very hard rocking and cool. “The Inevitable Summer” is somewhat overlong jamming, but that doesn’t matter, because it leads to “The Crimson Sunset” – that same acoustic intro from the beginning that certainly can give us some thoughts about the concept of the song and closes the whole thing on the very high note.
Speaking of these live covers, I don’t really have a clue why they have placed it on here. All of the covers are good, but what’s the reason for me to hear them? Plus, James shows absolute disability to sing live, so the singing is like from your worst nightmare. But the covers are well played. “The Big Medley” is probably my favourite of all them. It opens with an awesome rendition of Pink Floyd’s “In The Flesh?” and then goes into that awesome instrumental section from Kansas’ “Carry On Wayward Son”. What a cool riff that song has! Anyway, we continue with a “heavy metal” part of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”. Journey’s “Lovin’, Touchin’, Squeezin’” is completely out of place on here, and James screams like a cock-rock monster on here. Dixie Dregs’ “Cruise Control” was performed well on here too (though I haven’t heard the original yet). Finally, the close the medley with the bouncy Genesis’ “Turn It On Again” (one of the best synth-pop song ever done, by the way).
Out of other four covers, Deep Purple’s “Perfect Strangers” has lost its’ keyboard charm and the Led Zeppelin covers medley (“The Rover”, “Achilles Last Stand” and “The Song Remains The Same”) isn’t my real favourite, but Elton John’s “Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” is really something. I haven’t heard the original, and I don’t like Dream Theater’s performance of “Love Lies Bleeding”, but “Funeral For A Friend” is excellent. Dark, tragic and absolutely beautiful.
Overall, this album is worthy enough to buy because of the title track. Covers aren’t that great, but you can like them. I don’t like them, but I don’t dislike them too. For me, it’s average Dream Theater filler. But, still, why couldn’t they release a 23-minute EP? It could be the greatest EP ever made.
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In 1996, the band hired Desmond Child to produce their new album. In result, we have the Dream Theater album that sounds like nothing else – it’s a pure commercial product, form the beginning to the end. Nu-metal, AOR, generic hard rock – it’s all here. But, surprisingly, it all sounds good and interesting. Fans blame the band to “sell-out” on this album and hate the record like the mortal man can hate the piece of plastic called CD, but I like it. Call it “guilty pleasure”.
The band doesn’t play any prog, on here, with the possible exception of two 10+ minute epics – “Lines In The Sand” and “Trial Of Tears”. The first one is a John Petrucci show all over – he and his guitar just shine. From the opening intro to the crazy guitar passages between chorus and verses, John rules on here. And the vocal part is really clever and cool, especially chorus with a vocal interplay between James LaBrie and Doug Pinnick from King’s X. And the riff is speedy and catchy. “Trial Of Tears” is maybe better. It begins with a strange pseudo-ambient intro (like the one from “Xanadu” by Rush), but then turns into an awesome ballad. Then the fantastic guitar solo comes into, and, after it, the song becomes an awesome dark-sounding hard rocker.
The other songs are purely commercial sounding. Take, for example, the mellow ballad “Hollow Years”. It easily can be described as the best Mike And The Mechanics song Mike And The Mechanics have never written. In fact, all songs of that miserable Mike Rutherford band suck (except for “Living Years”), but “Hollow Years” is awesome. Cheesy, but awesome. There are three more ballads on this album and all of them are more or less good too. “Anna Lee” is a great Queen rip-off, “Take Away My Pain” has a great melody” and “Peruvian Skies” demonstrates how great this band’s hard-rocking ballad can be.
“You Not Me” sounds like Bon Jovi, but, once again, Bon Jovi can’t even hope to write a song as catchy and clever as “You Not Me”. Dumb lyrics are dumb lyrics, but the song itself is cool! Rocking and everything. By the way, something about rocking songs. “Burning My Soul” and “Just Let Me Breathe” are dumb nu-metal songs and it’s more than strange that they are my favourites on here! “Burning My Soul” has an awesome melody and superb chorus. And the keyboard solo is a great one too! “Just Let Me Breathe” has even a rap chorus! Imagine that! A good song anyway.
So, overall, the album has only two serious letdowns: “New Millenium” (boring eight minutes of pseudo-industrial techno rhythms) and “Hell’s Kitchen” (four minutes of absolutely nothing), but the album is good by me. It is very underrated by almost anyone, but I take it over fan-favourite Images And Words on any day.
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I don’t know why Dream Theater suddenly decided to release a double live album with 70+ minutes of music on each of the CDs. It’s interesting that it’s a recording of one show (recorded in Paris on June 25, 1998) and the band actually perform with maximum of their abilities and even doesn’t sound tired by the end of the performance. James, of course, doesn’t really sing good on stage, but does it really matter, if the show itself was good?
The song selection is really solid. Almost all of these songs are highlights (minus “Pull Me Under”) and it’s really nothing to say about them. The only problem I have with this album is that they included solo spots from every player, except for John Myung and James LaBrie, of course, but the other three are terrible. I can’t imagine anyone sitting through six minutes of Mike Portnoy drum solo or seven minutes of tired guitar playing from John Petrucci. Even little piano spot from Derek bores the shit out of me. In fact, these are the only possible comments about this album that I can tell to you. It’s just an ordinary live record. Go buy it, if you want.
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Oh yeah! They have finally reached it! After Derek left the band, new keyboardist, Jordan Rudess has joined, and the band began to record an awfully pretentious rock opera – a sequel to that “Metropolis” song from Images And Words. Most of the band’s fans consider this album to be the finest gem in all Dream Theater career, and, well, I agree. Scenes From A Memory can be called the best prog metal albums ever, and it, without a doubt, goes into my top 10 albums of all time. The album is awesome all the way through, with genius melodies and outstanding playing that can be found anywhere. Plus, the story is somewhat interesting too. It’s so simple sci-fi story with the past life, mystical murders, hypnotists and everything like that. And the album itself is divided into two different acts each one consisting of different scenes. I won’t concentrate on the story, though, it’s a MUSIC review site, after all.
And music is simply great. The band tries to do everything that they can do – from calm ballads (“The Spirit Carries On”) to progressive rock epics (“Beyond This Life”) to simple hard rock songs (“Strange Deja Vu”) to powerful metal jams (“The Dance Of Eternity”), and it all works, because the songwriting is awesome. The majority of material is written by Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci with small contributions from James LaBrie and John Myung (Rudess didn’t get a chance for his song on here) and the guys are on their peak! I can’t name a single song that is not great in some way. The old melodies from the first “Metropolis” are re-written and turned into the real songs and new melodies are introduced. And it works, works, works, works!
The album opens with “Regression” – a small calm acoustic ballad with the spoken section of “Hypnotherapist” in the beginning. The actual song is less than a minute, but it’s surely great. It flows into “Overture 1928”. As you might guess it, it’s an instrumental and a great one. There’s almost no need to describe it, because, just like any other overture, like, say, The Who’s “Quadrophenia”, it brings the best melodies from the entire album into one instrumental section. Great.
“Strange Deja Vu” could be an awesome hit single. It’s a multi-part song that begins like an ordinary hard rocker with an awesome complicated riff, but then that “Today I am searching for it” part goes with an awesome melody and a fantastic vocal hook. Then the another hard rocking part goes and we return to the second part of the song that closes this little masterpiece.
“Through The Words” is a little piano interlude that leads to the first of the album’s epics – “Fatal Tragedy”. Yet another great song that begins with a dark piano section, but then that metallic guitar joins and the song becomes ever more darker, with a really gorgeous chorus and a fantastic second part of the song with a scary guitar song that repeats and repeats and finally gets stuck in your head. Incredible. The chorus is still here and it still sounds amazing. The instrumental section of this song with fantastic interplay between medieval keyboard and Eastern-sound guitar is more than cool.
“Beyond This Life” is a big, 11 minutes long epic and it is just perfect. Mike Portnoy goes absolutely nuts and shows that he can easily pretend to be one of the best drummers ever. The song itself is great. It begins like a standard metal rocker with calm verses and really angry heavy choruses. Plus here a fantastic bridge and an awesome dark vocal section with James screaming all over, and you won’t be disappointed. And then there’s that jam with that slow dark riff repeating all over that turns into a funky section with virtuoso Rudess and Petrucci soloing. And the closing vocal section is very melodic. The whole thing is perfect.
“Through Her Eyes” is a calm ballad, and a good one. The song has a great relaxing atmosphere, and Theresa Thomason adds some nice vocals, but, overall, the song is the weakest one on the whole album. But it doesn’t mean it is bad. It’s still a damn good song.
“Home” opens the second act of the album and it’s just amazing. Although the bass part is clearly rip-offed from Tool’s “Forty Six & 2”, “Home’ is still my favourite Dream Theater song. I don’t know why. Maybe because it has the unforgettable Eastern charm, or maybe because it’s just very powerful... It is awesome from the beginning to the end. The intro with keyboards imitating sitar; powerful riffs in the actual song part and the fantastic soloing in the closing jam. Jordan Rudess shows that he is the best keyboardist Dream Theater has ever got and one of the best ever.
“The Dance Of Eternity” is just long and dark instrumental with different parts changing each other after 40 or so seconds. It still sounds like a complete and great composition, though. I especially love that awesome ragtime section. John Petrucci contributes maybe his best solo of all time (just right after that ragtime section), but I’m not sure – he has so many great solo that I just can’t choose only one of them.
“One Last Time” is a ballad and a good one. The only James LaBrie contribution to the album, it’s clearly his best song (though I can’t remember any other except for “Anna Lee”), but a weak piece for such a great album. The melody is cool anyway. And how can not that “One last tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime” line stuck in your head?
“The Spirit Carries On” is the another ballad and it’s much better than “One Last Time” and “Through Her Eyes”. It is actually a Roger Waters rip-off, but a great one for sure. The melody is simply gorgeous and the chorus is just brilliant. Lyrics are simple, but, for some reason, I like them better than any lyrics in any other Dream Theater song. “If I die tomorrow/ I’ll be allright, because I believe/ That after we’re gone/ The spirit carries on”. Maybe it’s just gorgeously sung over a gorgeous melody, so I can’t help myself.
Allright, it’s time for the culmination, for the final. “Finally Free” is a simple pop song with a great infectious chorus and a little reprise of “One Last Time”. It’s a great song to end the album, although I’m quite puzzled about the final section of the song with all these samples around. They don’t add anything to the story and they are just stupid. Anyway, I can always pass them by.
Oh, so this is Metropolis, Part 2. A fantastic, genius album. Go buy it now. Just go and buy it. It’s one of my favourite albums of all time and there’s a huge chance that you it will be yours too.
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So the band spent almost entire 2001 sitting in a studio, recording new songs. They had a lot of material, I believe, and it shows, you know. Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence is a double album, with the first CD lasting a little less than an hour and the second CD lasts for 42 minutes. Overall, a little less than two hours. Plus, there’s not a single song on here! The first CD has five huge epics (the shortest of them clocks at 6:46) and the second CD has just one song – the long and giant title track. The parts of that epic are actually tracked like separated songs, but, well, if we can call “A Change Of Seasons” a single huge song, why can’t we do it with “Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence”?
“The Glass Prison” opens this album on a very high note. A powerful, simply mindblowing riff is awesome and the whole song doesn’t even bore me at all. For all of its’ 14 minutes, the song always has something ‘to say’. All of the different parts are great. I’ve got the only one problem with the song – in parts it actually sounds dangerously close to “The Grudge” by Tool. But is there something evil in that? No, because “The Grudge” is an awesome song, Tool is an awesome band, and Dream Theater surely can rip-off well.
“Blind Faith” lasts for about 10 minutes and it’s good, actually. Petrucci and Rudess play their best solos since the previous album and the whole song is kinda good too. It’s a bit overlong, but does that matter? And it leads to the best song on here – “Misunderstood”. A great epic ballad with calm verses and an amazing melody all over. It turns to a really heavy ballad later, but it’s still a fantastic song anyway. And it closes with a long experimental keyboard noise jam. Something very interesting and weird for this band, you know. A great song anyway.
“The Great Debate” is another song that runs for 14 minutes, but maybe almost 7 minutes of it are just needless nothing and shitloads of various samples. The song part itself is fantastic, but the whole thing isn’t really great by all means. Same goes for “Disappear” – it’s just a simple ballad that bores me to tears. Not the worst thing the band has done, but rather just a throwaway.
The second CD, as I said, consists of just one epic, which I don’t like REALLY much, but at least three of its’ eight parts are really cool. “About To Crash” is catchy and simple rock song, it reminds me of “Strange Deja Vu” or even something from Falling Into Infinity. “Losing Time/Grand Finale” is simply fantastic with the first part that has maybe the best melody out of the entire album. “Grand Finale” is somewhat disappointing, mainly because there’s really nothing happening there. But my personal fave out of all suite is “Solitary Shell”. Yeah, I know that the main melody is taken directly from Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill”, but the actual melody is incredible. Plus, Jordan Rudess proves that he is one of the best keyboard players around.
Unfortunately, other parts are not that great. The opening “Overture” is pretty boring, with these fake strings all over and simply non-existent melody. “War Inside My Head” and “The Test That Stumped Them All” are twins – heavy, metallic and absolutely dumb. I also see no need in the reprise of “About To Crash” and “Goodnight Kiss” is simply awful. Maybe the worst song the band has ever done. A stupid sweety ballad that brings the days of “Another Day” or something. Completely worthless.
So that's all about it. The album itself isn't bad, it's just the weakest album the band had released since the days of Images And Words or something. Hope that their next album will be better, but this one isn't really bad too. Get it sometime.
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