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(Clicka qua per la versione Italiana)
Summary.
Dream Theater, formed at Boston's prestigious Berklee College of Music, established a new standard for progressive metal. Their second album, Images And Words (1992), constructed lengthy melodic fantasias that relied on symphonic magniloquence (Kevin Moore on keyboards), fluid instrumental passages (John Petrucci on guitar), haphazard rhythms (Mike Portnoy on drums) and romantic emphasis (James Labrie on vocals). At the same time breathless and catchy, rock and neoclassical, impulsive and brainy, this style became even more elaborate on Awake (1994), although it lost some of its bite, which got further diluted in the seven-movement suite A Change Of Seasons (1995).
Full bio.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
Charlie Dominici (vocals), Kevin Moore (keyboards), John Petrucci (guitars), Mike Portnoy (drums), and John Myung (bass) made up Dream Theater, the New York-based group (though formed at Bostons Berklee College of Music) that quickly became a vanguard of progressive heavy metal with classically influenced melodies, intense atmospheres, symphonic arrangements, and intricate song developments.
In the evolutionary line stretching from
Emerson Lake & Palmer to
Yes,
and then from
Rush
to
Queensryche,
Dream Theater pair the harshest sounds of rock music with its gravest tones, thereby forging tragic musical poems that evoke visions of geometrically neutral worlds.
Their debut album, When Dream And Day Unite (Mechanic, 1989), showcased their arranging skills in long compositions (all over seven minutes) such as The Killing Hand, with its tragic and fatalistic theme carried at a martial pace, Light Fuse And Get Away, with its sinister and menacing stride, and The Ones Who Help Set The Sun, starting with an atmospheric and fairytale-like intro. The symphonic grandeur of A Fortune In Lies combined with a frenzied gallop that, track by track, led to the baroque escape of the grand finale, Only A Matter Of Time, in a spectacular parade of grand gestures.
Images And Words (Atco, 1992), featuring James LaBrie in place of Dominici, further refined their approach, giving even more space to Moores symphonic interventions and lengthening tracks to near-suite proportions. Dream Theater can especially boast unusual skills as directors of sound: the ability to build complex harmonies and let different episodes flow within a single track. In the catchy Pull Me Under (the single), Moores overwhelming organ rhythms drive a breathtaking gallop that then gives way to a grandiose melody; the stormy harmony of Take The Time thrives on violent tremors and earth-shaking jolts from the instruments, forcing the melody to fight its way through in a shout; Learning To Live (perhaps the best synthesis of their eclecticism) opens on classical-style chords to create the most unsettling atmosphere on the album, occasionally indulging in a medieval dance or a fandango; not to mention the chameleon-like Metropolis Pt 1, their most ambitious piece.
Rhythmic breaks are essential for the theatricality of these compositions: in Surrounded, LaBries roaring funky-soul theme is preceded by a heavy-metal guitar attack doubled by a supersonic keyboard staccato. Their art also lies in contrasts, as when LaBrie sings the oriental-flavored melody of Under A Glass Moon over thrash rhythms, and in insertions, as in Another Day, a classy ballad where a romantic saxophone solo complements LaBries finest melody.
Much of the appeal of these scores comes from the counterpoint among keyboards, drums, and guitarthree instruments (the first classically flavored, the second jazz-rooted, the third soaked in all the tricks of rock) that engage in perfectly organized jams without any one dominating, weaving their respective lines elegantly and naturally, even though the sounds are often extreme (deafening, rapid, brutal). With LaBrie, the quintet boasts a truly remarkable shouter, who never loses his classical composure and never allows the ongoing instrumental cataclysms to derail his melodic path.
Awake (1994) is an even more elaborate work, steeped in jazz-influenced sounds, though perhaps at the expense of immediate accessibility. 6:00, meticulously built on powerful guitar riffs, solemn organ chords, stormy funky syncopations, and an epic vocal theme, immediately demonstrates a leap forward. Equally dense with exciting elements, the instrumental Erotomania may represent the peak of virtuosity. The resulting dramaturgical abilities are evident in complex tracks like Voices, which alternate between acoustic passages and heavy metal barrages, all within a dense, massive, pyrotechnic soundscape. Yet the emotional peak may come from the albums most straightforward composition, The Mirror, whose rhythmsfrom the driving opening to the dub-style finaleare unusually regular. Caught In A Web and Scarred rely on the noisy pomp of the past to lesser effect. Lie repeats the commercial success of Pull Me Under. Moore indulges his classical leanings in Space Dye Vest, guided by a romantic piano motif, opening new musical vistas for the band.
Fulfilling the groups immense ambitions, A Change Of Seasons, the 1995 title track, is a seven-movement suite totaling twenty-five minutes, originally composed in 1989. Less hectic and aggressive than Metropolis, more pathetically romantic and classical, Seasons reveals a softer, introspective alter ego.
By reinventing the syntax of progressive rock, Dream Theater also highlighted new harmonic possibilities.
Falling Into Infinity (East West, 1997) marks a triumphant return. With age, Dream Theater abandoned heavy metal for large audiences and its melodramatic tones in favor of high-class progressive rock. New Millennium opens on a minimalist keyboard motif, soon overtaken by a solemn overture showcasing timbral inventiveness, with LaBrie finally singing the chorusonly for the instruments, led by Petruccis pyrotechnic guitar, to regain control, and the song degenerates into a subdued, almost funky jam, with the keyboards returning to their minimalist raga, until an armored riff brings back the chorus. If one can imagine a fusion of new age and heavy metal, this track is an excellent example.
New keyboardist Derek Sherinian adds an avant-garde touch to their genetic code, useful in linking flowing harmonies, intricate rhythms, and chameleon-like arrangements that now define their music. He dominates on Lines In The Sand (twelve minutes), at least during the first two minutes of cosmic, atmospheric music, before the leaders develop the theme with their usual intensity. He also crowns the search for balance in the three-movement suite Trial Of Tears (thirteen minutes), composed by bassist Myung.
Significantly, these Dream Theater excel in a suspenseful and mysterious ballad, Peruvian Skies, halfway between the more polished Pink Floyd and hallucinogenic country-rock. The adult, gentle, and idealistic side of the band dominates, from the tender Mediterranean melody of Hollow Years to the passionate pop of Take Away My Pain, from the Elton John-style piano romance of Anna Lee to the rhythmic and catchy You Not Me, simple songs that exude intimate warmth and rely on immediate choruses.
The single Burning My Soul, all impulse and grandiosity, serves mainly to satisfy long-time fans. The best old-school track may be Just Let Me Breathe, a powerful indictment against drugs, capitalism, and consumerism (see the slogan A daily dose of eMpTyV will flush your brain right down the drain), another reflection of the times.
The new direction of Dream Theater is difficult to classify. It shares little with 1990s heavy metal. Rather, the band can be credited with attempting to reinvent the ballad on nobler foundations, within the intricate dialectic of progressive rock.
The second part of Metropolis, already ready, was not included on this album simply due to space constraints.
Once In A Live Time (Eastwest, 1998) is a double live album that provides a spectacular overview of the bands career.
Finally, the group decided, with Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes From A Memory (Eastwest, 1999), to complete the unfinished suite that had appeared on Images And Words (Atco, 1992). Keyboardist Jordan Rudess (also in Liquid Tension with Tony Levin and Portnoy) brings a touch of Rush, which blends with some difficulty with Petruccis guitar, simultaneously elegant and powerful. In a word, the sound is more compact but less experimental.
The rock work is divided into two acts, each further divided into scenes. The second scene, for example, includes an Overture 1928, a short instrumental that pairs the electronic grandeur of Rush with speed-metal gallops. Then LaBries resonant vocals begin to unfold the story in Strange Deja Vu, with a pathetically melodic interlude. From there, the tempo changes animate the narrative, and the keyboards enrich it at every step with new sounds.
The theatricality of tracks like Fatal Tragedy and The Spirit Carries On seems to draw on orchestral Queen (with the orchestra replaced by keyboards), Pink Floyds Wish You Were Here, and even David Bowies glam-rock.
Technique and dynamics reach their peak in Beyond This Life and especially in the raga-metal hybrid Home, where the alternation of stylesfrom acoustic folk ballad to the most epileptic death-metalis as pyrotechnic as it is fluid.
Another spectacular track is the instrumental The Dance Of Eternity, a driving, classically inspired piece, romantic and geometric, updating Mussorgskys Pictures at an Exhibition for speed metal (with elegance and intensity that would make Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman envious), and featuring John Myungs finest bass solo.
The pronounced melodicism occasionally degenerates into nightclub-style songs like Through Her Eyes and One Last Time, languid, sentimental ballads that feel somewhat unworthy of musicians of their intellectual caliber.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (Elektra, 2002) is the band's new concept
album, an over-ambitious double CD that experiments new sonic avenues if not
new stylistic avenues.
Half of the album is occupied by the 42-minute fantasia
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, which sounds like the descendant
of the suites by Yes and King Crimson of the 1970s, but updated to the age of
cheap CD manufacturing (it could have been shrunk to seven minutes).
The Glass Prison and The Great Debate display the band's technical
prowess, but too many songs (Disappear) mirror the mellow experimentation
of late/lame Pink Floyd.
For about 20 minutes this is one of the greatest prog-rock bands of all time,
but for the remaining hour it is the most boring experience this side of Toto.
Dream Theater's former keyboardist Kevin Moore formed
Chroma Key and released Dead Air for Radios (1998) and
You go Now (2000).
Moore also launched a side-project, OSI, with Jim Matheos (Fates Warning) and Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater).
Train of Thought (Elektra, 2003) was
a disappointing, keyboards-heavy hodgepodge of Dream Theater cliches.
Many songs merely repeat, recycle and slightly revise
ideas, patterns and melodies that the band has rehearsed throughout the 1990s.
The melodic overture of As I Am (7:47), with its
sneering vocals and thundering guitar, sounds like third-rate pop-metal.
The suspense-filled atmosphere of This Dying Soul (11:28) adds
a bit of sound effects to their prog-metal routine.
The split-personality
Honor Thy FatherIn the Name of GodEndless SacrificeFrank Zappa-esque detour.
Another contender for best piece is
Stream of Consciousness
Mike Portnoy also played on
OSI's Office of Strategic Influence,
Transatlantic's The Roine Stolt Mixes
Neal Morse's The Transatlantic Demos,
Transatlantic's Bridge Across Forever,
Liquid Tension Experiment's Liquid Tension Experiment.
Transatlantic was a supergroup featuring Portnoy,
Roine Stolt of the Flower Kings and Pete Trewavas of Marillion.
James LaBrie has released the solo album
Elements Of Persuasion
plus
Frameshift's Unweaving The Rainbow,
Mullmuzzler's Mullmuzzler 2 ,
Mullmuzzler Keep It To Yourself,
Winter Rose's Winter Rose.
Jordan Rudess has released the solo albums:
Rhythm Of Time,
4NYC,
Speedway Blvd,
Feeding The Wheel,
Listen.
The Rudess Morgenstein Project has released The Official Bootleg,
Rudess Morgenstein,
Project.
Dream Theater's bassist
John Myung has released the solo album
The Jelly Jam and, with Platypus,
Ice Cycles and When Pus Comes To Shove .
Octavarium (Atlantic, 2005), a 76-minute colossus, is less truculent
and more intimate than its predecessor.
To start with, the songwriting sounds more
heartfelt, particularly in the convoluted eight-minute confession of
The Root Of All Evil
and in the eleven-minute waltzing requiem and apotheosis
Sacrificed Sons for the Islamic terrorist attacks of 2001.
The overall sound and instrumental interplay harks back to the tight metal
style of their beginnings, of which the frenzied eight-minute charge of
Panic Attack, both operatic and relentless in its display of
prog-rock stereotypes, could be the ideal summary.
Their melodic side is well represented by the
piano ballad The Answer Lies Within (that sounds like
a singer-songwriter from the 1970s) and the brief and catchy
I Walk Beside You (somewhere between
Bon Jovi and
Cars).
Finally, the 24-minute five-movement suite Octavarium is a
hodgepodge of abused progressive-rock vocabulary,
but nonetheless it exudes pure class from the first ecstatic suspense-filled
Pink Floyd-ian minute
to the pathetic symphonic finale a` la Who,
via the pastoral King Crimson-ian flute-driven elegy,
the operatic Rush-ian aria,
and the Yes-style hard-rocking fugue.
LaBrie, Petrucci, Rudess, Myung and Portnoy make up one of the most
formidable music machines of all time.
Black Clouds & Silver Linings (2009)
marked a return to the verbose frenzy of Train of Thought, with even
longer tracks, and sounded
hopelessly derivative (of their own style).
A Nightmare To Remember (16:10) is their typical emphatic melodrama,
with the usual contrasts of mood, basically an aimless multi-part suite.
The pure senseless hysteria of The Shattered Fortress (12:49) and
the half-baked power-ballad The Best Of Times (13:09)
fail to muster enough substance or feeling.
Despite the superficial similarity with Octavarium,
The neurotic operetta The Count Of Tuscany (19:16) is a great idea
gone berserk, a collage of
Yes,
Andrew Lloyd Webber's musicals,
Brian Eno
and Queen.
Sometimes simpler is better:
A Rite Of Passage (8:36) serves a poppy refrain sandwiched between
two truculent ends; and
the shortest song, Wither (5:25), one of their most hummable melodies,
constitutes a further nod at adolescent pop balladry but at least it succeeds
at what it tries.
This album also concluded the The Twelve-step Suite
a a rock opera about alcoholism whose episodes appeared on five albums:
The Glass Prison,
This Dying Soul,
The Root of All Evil,
Repentance,
and
The Shattered Fortress.
By their standards,
Systematic Chaos (2007) was a mediocre album, despite the elaborate
25-minute In The Presence Of Enemies
and the parade of vocalists in Repentance.
A Dramatic Turn of Events (Roadrunner 2011) was their first album without
Mike Portnoy. The vast majority of the album feels like filler or leftovers
from previous albums, and even the counterpoint acrobatics of
Outcry and Lost Not Forgotten don't quite justify the length
of the songs.
Dream Theater (2013) contains the single The Enemy Inside,
the saccharine ballad The Bigger Picture ,
the instrumental Enigma Machine (one of their best)
and the 22-minute suite Illumination Theory.
But the two-hour rock opera The Astonishing (2016), scored by
Jordan Rudess and John Petrucci in seclusion, contains little
of note,
Distance Over Time (2019), their shortest disc yet,
contains At Wit's End and generic imitations of their original style,
A View From the Top of the World (2021) tried in vain to
resurrect the spirit of the early albums with lengthy meditations like
The Alien (9:32),
Sleeping Giant (10:05),
Awaken the Master (9:47), perhaps the best, and
the grandiose A View From the Top of the World (20:24).
Charlie Dominici died in 2023.
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