I'm a huge huge huge Metallica fan, and have been a MetClub member for like 4 years now (at least).
Always nice to meet a fellow Metallica fan. Have you heard anything about the new album? Apparently they started messing around with new material on their most recent tour. On this tour, they played Master of Puppets the whole way through to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the album's release, and supposedly Master of Puppets influenced the new material. Let's hope that they go back to their roots, but not going back to their roots like they did on St. Anger...
That's true, but these guys have what it takes. They've got the chemistry, work off each other really well live, and from what I've heard are all really awesome, down to earth guys. Especially Portnoy, I hear he's the man. Dude's the man enough that he has a little Asian dude that isn't John Myung sitting behind his drumset to swing out a mic whenever he needs to do backup vocals. Petrucci seems like a bit of a tool though. But he can be, since he can kill you from shredding so fast.
I don't think shredding justifies being a tool. And of course Mike Portnoy is the man...me being a drummer, he's the one in the band I respect the most. I'd hate to be his drum tech though.
Anyways, I listened to Images and Words. What I did was open a Word document and just listed my thoughts as each song played. So without further ado, here's what came of my Dream Theater listening session...
Track 1) The riff sounds like it belongs in Metallica’s self titled album or perhaps Van Halen II. Singer’s voice sounds slightly out of place. Nice drum triggers, Mr. Portnoy. Argh, there goes the shred. The keyboard reminds me of video game music. Okay, enough of the vocal musings. When is this song going to end?
2) Oh, how sweet, acoustic guitar and piano. Hey, an 80’s ballad solo. Ugh. That’s all. Ugh. This song sounds out of place. The guitar solo would be decent if he didn’t do all those stupid tapping tricks. It sounds like they have an adult contemporary saxophone player. Is that the keyboardist using different sounds?
3) The keyboard counterpoint melody at the beginning is lame. There is too much going on during the verse; the funky strum would probably sound cool all by itself. You know, sticking to one rhythm isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Shuffle straight shuffle shuffle hey listeners, let’s play “Guess That Time Signature!” Also, why do keyboard players like the pitch shift control so much? I feel like I can predict the next chord they’re going to use. That’s not a good thing. Must there be a few counts of shred in between each sustaining note?
4) Ethereal keyboards…hooray for going over the bar line. I’m actually impressed. That doesn’t mean I’m enjoying this. Okay John, enough of the guitar tricks. Is this what people call “passionate” music?
5) SLEIGH BELLS LOL. Hmm, this sounds like the first song all over again. Alright, the time signatures impress me, but yeesh, these chord progressions are pretty trite. LaBrie wailing doesn’t help much. He needs to stop hitting high notes. Hey, let’s give the bassist his share of the spotlight! Alright John Myung, your 5 seconds are up. NOW LET’S ALL GO WATCH THE GUITARIST AND THE KEYBOARDIST AGAIN. Hmm, they’re using some interesting scales here. Oh wait, there goes LaBrie again. Bah.
6) Okay…nifty double bass pedal groove. Again nice use of scales. Oh wait. The keyboard fucked it up. Carnival music is what this sounds like to me. This song reminds me of Iced Earth. You get the same effect with either band. Only Iced Earth isn’t anywhere near as hyped up as Dream Theater. Some nice use of subdivision in this song by the rhythm section…but the keyboard is too distracting. Okay, standard metal percussive hits here.
7) Piano ballad…it’s an interesting melody.
8) Odd-time shuffles are nice. Okay, that’s enough.
Conclusions) I still hate Dream Theater. On most of these songs, I found myself counting down until the song ended. But to be honest, I almost want to enjoy them. Listening to this album has given me more respect for them as musicians. Frankly, I think I might enjoy them if they dropped the keyboardist, the singer and the shred solos. On a slightly related note, I could just have an overall pessimistic view because I'm at the moment sick of any heavy metal that isn't Metallica, Mastodon or King Diamond. I've spent most of the past year and a half listening almost exclusively to metal. Progressive atmospheric melodic death metal from Sweden, anyone? That said, a lot of metal sounds trite to me.
So I must thank you for confronting my pessimism towards DT. I still don't like them, but at least they're not as much of prog-metal wankers as Spiral Architect.
