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The Inconsistency of Dream Theater

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Images and Words was a huge part of my teenage years. I also enjoyed Awake, A Change of Seasons and the first half of Falling Into Infinity. I don’t know what happened to Dream Theater after that. The following albums, right up until the eponymous Dream Theater album in 2013 were listenable, but boring and spent most of their time on the shelf for me. However, the eponymous album was a real return to form and I played and enjoyed it a lot.

Now it’s 2016 and Dream Theater have releases a 2 hour concept album called The Astonishing. It’s a dystopian science fiction theme and I love long albums (like the new Swallow The Sun album at 3 hours) so it should have been perfect for me. From the second listen I was struggling. My feeling all the way through was where are the riffs, where is the metal?

I bought the new Axel Rudy Pell, Avantasia and Primal Fear albums at the same time and all were instantly more listenable, enjoyable and digestible. Hopefully Dream Theater will get their act together next time around. I think they need to catch up with the other prog metal bands they influenced such as Threshold, Scar Symmetry and Pagan’s Mind.

Comments

  1. hkdave951 February 2016 at 13:03

    I have not purchased much music for a few years. And the Genre I have ended up in tends to be slightly odd. The old heavies I listen to on occaision, however, I am drawn further towards gentler genres. Metalica might be my HM band of preference at the moment, although it has become less important to me in designing my software.

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