I have a soft spot for bands that go too far. Pretty sure it was Bill Maher who said something like, “If you never cross the line—how would you know where it is?”

In music, that idea should be Gospel.

The first modern “prog” band I ever heard, it was Dream Theater’s penchant for line-crossing and excess that drew me to them. I went nuts for just how over the top they could be. Everything from the 25-minute songs, the huge melodic bridges, the overblown concepts—I loved it all. I even loved how often they showed off in their tracks, going on these massive instrumental tangents that may or may not really have anything to do with the song’s primary melody. They did it because it sounded cool, and because, technically, they could.

They were virtuosos; they could anything they wanted. And I wanted them to.

That being said, there’s a time and place for hyperactivity. Excess can be fun, but emotional excess is better. Scenes from a Memory proves how powerful focus could be in an album. It isn’t Dream Theater’s fastest or most eclectic piece of work, but I’d say it’s definitely their best.

Trading in the “epic” formula for mood and melody, Scenes taught me that it’s possible to be proficient and grounded simultaneously. It’s a concept album, sure, but I’ve always been more concerned with the music than the story. It’s the thematic mantras that keep us moving; the narrative is just a canvas for emotion.

“What we have been is what we are”

If you’ve read anything I’ve written on Dream Theater in the past, you know how I feel about their recent output. What’s most disappointing, and genuinely upsetting, however, is how the band really seems to be completely without any sort of identity anymore. They’ve spiraled, into this nothing routine of just… making records, pumping out songs that feel more like compilations of riffs and solos they’d had in storage from older sessions. Except it’s all filtered this faux-metal veneer.

Say what you want about the band’s earlier stuff, but it wasn’t afraid to be pretty, and melodic (“Another Day,” “Space Dye Vest”). And with Scenes, they hit a climax (one they get close to in the 2^nd disc of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence), really creating some beautiful and graceful stuff. Sometimes it goes too far (“Home,” “The Dance of Eternity”), but mostly it’s focused, honest music, stuff the band really poured themselves into, body and soul. That can be said of exactly nothing they’ve produced in an easy 6 years. Closer to 8.

But, at the end of the day, I’m a Dream Theater fan. It’s just the way it is. And even if they happen to suck at the moment, maybe never even make another album worth praising, well, they’re still Dream Theater.

We’ll always have Scenes.
 
 
Listen/Watch:

Honorable Mention(s): Dream Theater – Images & Words; A Change of Seasons; Awake; Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

“Stand up, stand up”

I was really into synth prog at the start of my musical journey of enlightenment.

Grand-sounding, complex stuff, too—Genesis, Dream Theater, anything Neal Morse. It’s all I listened to, the more epic the scale the better. It was a time when size more than mattered, when concepts were king. I could do 25-minute songs all day; my only criteria: they had to be grounded in something emotional.

Transatlantic was a poster child for those expectations.

Noodling for noodling’s sake is for the birds, just as much now as it was then. I was in it for the climax, the slow burn. I wanted to forget I was already 15, 20 minutes deep into a track until I stumbled across and was leveled by its payoff.

That’s how you knew you’d found something awesome.

Transatlantic is a “supergroup,” a band comprised of stars from other bands: Dream Theater’s drummer, Spock’s Beard’s keyboardist/frontman, Marillion’s bassist and The Flower Kings’ co-lead. And in that way, you could say that for me Transatlantic’s bridge was not only one across the forever of its title, but also across a pretty huge sect of the modern world of prog. After falling in love with Bridge, it’s only natural to follow around the musicians who made it, from their main bands to their many side-projects.

Look at the tracklist and right away you know you’re dealing with a doozie. There are only four tracks on the record, two over 25 minutes, one 15-minutes+, and one 5-minuter. And then it starts, with deep and elegant string work leading to a piano melody (“Duel with the Devil”) that I think I’ll forever associate with all music stamped with the “prog” label. The vocals don’t even kick in for close to 5 minutes. By then you’re ready.

“Remember life is hanging in the balance”

I couldn’t make a Most Important Albums list without including Transatlantic. These guys get right the “prog epic” formula here, mixing a retro sensibility with more modern beauty/experimentation ideals. And there’s a lot of faith in this record. Like all of Neal Morse’s writing, this is an album about believing. But it’s done tastefully, in echoes rather than the hollow thumping of religious rhetoric. It’s genuine because, as a collective piece of music, it really isn’t about religion—as in, “God’s great, here’s why.” Instead, it’s about making something beautiful, and fun, and ambitious with people you love. It’s about that creative charge, which shines through most in the traded off vocal bridges and harmonies. There’s a togetherness there (not all of these guys have the best singing voices, yet they sing) that says so much more about what this band and record is about than any passage of regurgitated gospel ever could.

It feels at times like a crazy jam session where everything just magically falls into place, is choreographed somehow, through nothing but the feel inside the studio, the guiding hum of the amplifiers.

In a lot of ways, Bridge Across Forever set a standard for me of what “progressive” music could and sometimes should be. It shouldn’t be all keyboards and half-hour-long songs—don’t get me wrong. But it should be serious (AKA: the fewer allusions to dragons, etc. the better). It should borrow from the past but look to the future.

It should be surprising.

In the canon of most memorable/influential records I own, Bridge Across Forever was like the straw that finally broke radio’s back, or, my relationship with radio’s back. Or something. It was powerful. And still, and into the future, this is a band that I’ll keep eyes on, whose new releases I’ll anticipate—especially since they don’t come around that often.

When asked after Bridge was released in 2001 when we could expect their 3rd outing (what came to be the fantastic The Whirlwind in ’09—MY REVIEW), drummer Mike Portnoy dodged the question. He didn’t want their albums to be on a schedule, he said, to be expected.

There’s a flow to this collaboration, he told a reporter. And the band wants to keep that special.
 
 
Listen:

Honorable Mention: Neal Morse – ? (“Neal Overflow”)

SPOILER: Later in the countdown, I’ll be posting on a Morse-era Spock’s Beard album. So with that review to come, and Transatlantic here, I feel like I’ve adequately covered all the Neal Morse ground I probably should for a Top 50. Still, Morse’s solo work shouldn’t be overlooked, either—especially his ? album, which proves once and for all that “Christian” rock is just a mindset, not a genre.

More recently, Morse’s God-centered writing has gotten pretty old (see: 2008’s insanely boring and unimaginative Lifeline). But there was a time, a long, dense time, when he mostly kept away from Jesus Ballads, using spirituality more as a theme, not a direct line into his church’s version of Scripture. There are still the obligatory hat tips to the ole J-man, sure (? is about the search for God, after all). But it’s also an incredible piece of music, an honest, life-affirming concept album of the deepest and most personal form. And plus, I’ve never put too much stock into lyrics. To me, if they’re lame but the music’s good, OK; but if they’re good, they only make the music better. If you’re someone who’s turned off by hearing a vocalist even utter the words “God” or “Jesus” directly (and I’ve met my fair share), maybe you won’t warm up to this album like I did. But you ask me, that kind of thinking is just as silly as the “C-rockers” who strum their acoustics and sing about bible study.

Check out “The Temple of the Living God” and “In the Fire.”

“The curve of the horizon, a masterpiece”

Do not adjust your screen. What you’re seeing is not a mirage. That’s right, this week I’m going with not 1, not 2, not even 3 but 4 albums as my #36. Ah yes, this should really piss people off.

Method to my madness? Well, my reasoning is actually pretty simple. When I think Radiohead, I don’t think of one record. To me, there’s no singular piece of their catalog that screams DEFINITIVE. Instead, when I think of Radiohead I think of Radiohead. Thom Yorke’s trademark whine, the atmosphere, how every album, no matter how incredibly different it is from the pieces before it, sounds remarkably, exactly and perfectly, like Radiohead. This quality is an absolute gift, the ability to be You no matter how many styles or symphonics you drape over your shoulders. Radiohead is Radiohead, and I love their poppy The Bends as much as their spacey Kid A, or their electronic-industrial In Rainbows, or even their go-to automatic, OK Computer.

So. As I type these words, one of the bands that introduced me to music as I see and hear it today, Dream Theater, broke up today. Not all of Dream Theater, actually, but their drummer-leader Mike Portnoy left, saying what I (and others, I’m sure) have been thinking for their past couple records, that instead of feeding artistic, inspired and creative flames with their work, lately it’s felt like the band has been merely “going through the motions.”

Now, despite my (many)complaints about their recent output (as well as others’ complaints about DT as a more or less symbol of the greater “prog” initiative), this is a band I loved, a band I still love. And so reading Portnoy’s release (which felt like a resolutely ambivalent diary entry) was sad, even though it was also inevitable… and made total sense… and was probably overdue.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying DT had to break up, but the writing was on the wall. Not every band can have the same zest for stylistic experimentation as The Beatles, but when it came to really, truly branching out, breaking out of “shells” or “comfort zones” or whatever other metaphors for security you can come up with, Dream Theater was only slightly short of artistically bankrupt. After 25 years, how could they not get bored?

On the backpedaling side of the scale, you could say the same thing about bands like Metallica, Sigur Ros… hell, even Genesis and Yes and a hundred other bands. These guys do what they do and they do it incredibly, God bless ‘em. But they rarely reinvent, as far as what can be expected of their next release. A Yes album may be a little synthier or a little more frenetic than the one before it, but it’s still a Yes album. The same for Genesis, from Trespass up to Selling England*—more or less, kinda.

*Stopping before Lamb Lies Down wasn’t an accident. It would be unfair to compare that to their debut (as in their 2^nd album). And of course I’m talking Gabriel-era Genesis. All bets are off when a band head hightails it.

“Beyond beyond, into unknown”

Only seldom do you find a band that’s willing to literally deconstruct its formula after every record only to rebuild with the next. It’s a incredible quality to have as an artist, one that sets bands like Radiohead among the elite, one that, I can’t help but think, would’ve saved Dream Theater—both from disbandment and the downward spiral of their pseudo-“metal” Systematic Chaos/Black Clouds era.

What else can we be? It’s this question that I think keeps bands from running in circles and turning stale. It’s this question that keeps them young.

What I’m trying to say is, every band may strive for reinvention but only few commit themselves to it as a lifestyle. Without bothering with song breakdowns or some buzzword-laden gush session, I’ll keep to the point. I love Radiohead for everything they are and everything they’re going to be, even if most of what they try from this point forward fails. A band like this is the sum of its discography, not one or a couple cherry-picked parts. And even if you come for the diversity, the contradiction and constant state of self-revolution, you stay for the mood and affect. That unexplainable something that we push under the rug in dissection and genre analysis. That thing that happens between track 1 and 12. That thing that affirms that sound is magic and, in our hearts, we love it because we love it, not because of what we write about it.
 
 
Listen/Watch:

“Sulk,” The Bends

“Paranoid Android,” OK Computer

“Everything in its Right Place,” Kid A

“15 Step,” In Rainbows

Honorable Mention: Gazpacho – Night / Tick Tock

While I’m at the whole “cheating” thing, I might as well pick more than one record for my honorable mention(s), too.

Gazpacho should be recognized. Recognized not only because the lead singer has a total Thom Yorke thing going on, but more because of what they have to say about the value of atmosphere. A part of the art/post-rock progressive rock subgenre (how long before we start getting subgenres of subgenres?), in each of these records, mantra is the watchword. More about mood than melody, each are put together from one central theme, then built over and on top of that theme in so many delicate layers and textures of string, percussion and piano that what we’re left with are these sprawling and almost dreamlike soundscapes. The albums take their time, in painting the scenery, adjusting the light and sculpting environments that we can really get lost in. What Gazpacho does is truly powerful. They’re a band with patience and a true, committed vision. Even though breaking albums like these into singles is really kind of missing the point, listen to “Chequered Light Buildings” from Night and “Desert Flight” from Tick Tock to get an idea of what they’re about.

I guess it’s like that with everything in life.

But musically, there’s always a turning point—a “gateway band” that opens your eyes to the fact that radio isn’t the last word in sound discovery at all, but actually the first, and a pretty hollow one. Cue Liquid Tension Experiment.

I don’t think I ever realized just what LTE meant to me until I was sitting with my friend Sadiq out by the pool one night, smoking hookah, drinking beer and looking out at the blackness fallen over the lake in my backyard. It was muggy and our feet were blue and slowly pruning underwater; ripples; the faint scent of chlorine and summer. Across the lake we watched cars go by in blurs of metal and headlights through a break in the trees, the glow from a lighted hotel sign, the moon’s reflection off the water. And we talked about nothing in particular as music played softly in the background.

When Liquid Tension’s “Universal Mind” came up on the stereo’s shuffle, I’d almost forgotten it was on there. This is not a band I listen to often, and even when I first discovered it, it wasn’t exactly go-to. You’ve got to understand, LTE is insane*. It’s fast “progressive” non-accessible instrumental freakout, put together by a group of guys who love to push just how over-the-top their talents can take them.

*The band is a “side project” of Dream Theater, with every member from DT except the bassist (who’s replaced by Tony Levin from King Crimson/Peter Gabriel) and the frontman.

When I first got into progressive rock, I wanted freakout because of how polar opposite it was from what I was used to. These prog musicians, they knew and mastered their craft. They weren’t just playing basic chords like mainstream artists do—these guys were showmen. I craved the culture-shock. Over time tastes would change and meet somewhere closer to the middle, but in the beginning bands like Dream Theater were king, early Rush, Yes. So it was only natural that LTE would also be in that group.

Liquid Tension’s life in my everyday spin cycle was pretty short-lived but ridiculously dense, giving it an extremely specific time period to represent in my musical yearbook: the summer of 2006. That summer, I listened to Liquid Tension like crazy—in the car, at work, on my laptop. None of my friends had “real” jobs yet or “real” problems. We played Wiffle ball almost every night and chased it with matches of Age of Empires on our computers.  Almost every night. We had girlfriends and were young enough to think they’d be around forever. We looked forward to “Festa Italian,” a yearly celebration across the lake at the Italian-American Club that we’d walk to from my house to buy sausage and peppers and pizza and zeppolis, to laugh at the broken down carnival rides and listen to the Frank Saffi Band play all the New York/Italian songs you’d expect them to play.

Only 4 years ago, those days are so close I can almost touch them if I stretch. But listening to the showy virtuoso freakout that is Liquid Tension Experiment, it’s funny, I’m both brought into that time and pushed out of it, taken back to realize just how long 4 years can be when you’re 19, or 21, and having birthdays, and going to college, and growing up, and for the first time in your life earning the right to look back, to sit quietly out by the pool just to think.

The summer months of 2006 stand as the very last days of a childhood I thought would last as long I cared to keep it—back when I thought you could control those things. After it, all of a sudden life happened and we all were different, still us but not “kids” anymore and not “adults.” We were “us,” a concept that was simple and complicated at the same time, one that for the first time I think we realized would always be in flux.

For me, Liquid Tension Experiment is the gateway band; it’s the break in the trees that holds festivals and Ferris wheels and innocence on one side, and everything else on the other. It’s the decision to move forward, away from what you know and into something else. And so it has a bittersweet reverb about it.

Out by the pool, I didn’t even have to close my eyes. “Universal Mind” sped out of the stereo and, presented in the hookah smoke, I saw that summer, all of it, finished with soft edges and starlight casted through the patio screen. And it’s funny–think about any summer from your own childhood; aren’t they kind of all like that?
 
 
Listen/Watch:

CHECK OUT THE REST OF THIS WEEK’S REVIEWS HERE

TRANSATLANTIC
The Whirlwind
Metal Blade
October 27, 2009
**** 4/5

How fitting that TRANSANTIC’s first album in almost 10 years wouldn’t just coincide with PORCUPINE TREE’s latest, but that they’d both be made of album-length song cycles – AKA: be 1 song. Each so different from one another, one grounded and the other grandiose, you couldn’t have asked for a better Venn diagram here, two opposite takes on the same idea, two testaments to two very different eras of prog-rock, of sensibility, and proof that this town of Prog is, in fact, big enough for the both of them.

Where each album differs so greatly is their language. While The Whirlwind goes traditional, keeping close to the belief that “progressive” means huge–big sound, big transitions, big conclusion–The Incident reverses it, so mild-mannered, often dancing close to the simplicity of pop. PORCUPINE TREE in effect turn the “progressive epic” idea on its head, never playing loud or fast for your attention, even ending their 55min run on a conscious anti-climax, not some grand reconstruction of familiar riffs.

And the crazy thing? Each method works, beautifully and in its own way.

Where The Incident seems defiant, The Whirlwind plays like a modern take on retro stylings. It’s got this great feel-good, head bobbing, sing-along quality about it, a funkiness through its driving bass and a more prominent, CHICAGO-esque vocal split between Stolte and Morse. But then it’ll go dark and haunting, a TRANSATLANTIC oddity, in something like “A Man Can Feel.” From there, transitioning straight into an “Out of the Night,” a song with a brightness of spirit only matched by an episode of The Cosby Show.

Like most any “Prog Epic,” The Whirlwind has the signature recurring melody thing going on, but it doesn’t rely on it for coherence–each song is at the same time wholly separate but not disconnected or feeling patched together. The album’s got a great fluidity to it, for 11 of its 12 movements, anyway. Then the last song happens.

“Dancing with Eternal Glory” is contrived and unnecessary, a prime example of the self-indulgency many complain about in prog. Which is really a shame since the track before it, “Is It Really Happenning?”, is so amazing, playing like a kind of ending before the ending. And it makes you wonder if this is where The Whirlwind maybe should have taken a page from PT’s book, ditched Step 12 in their “Making a Prog Epic” formula, the “conclusion” with its riff reprises and thematic wrap-up (just in case you haven’t gotten it yet), and just ended there, made a 65min piece instead of a 77min one. There’s no shame in that. Even for TRANSATLANTIC.

Then disc 2 is patchy and in places plain bad. It’s split between 4 original tracks–2 of which are Stolte’s and a lot of fun, one’s Neal’s and God awful (pun SO intended), and the last a boring Trewavas track–and 4 covers. And maybe it’s the closet pop-lover in me, but I kind of love the addition of America’s “I Need You” here. To me it’s the only truly worthwhile cover out of the bunch.

But disc 2 is just a bonus, a little extra to remind you just how much Roine Stolte has to offer, to prove once and for all in “Salty Dog” that Mike Portnoy actually does have some fairly decent pipes–but should probably stick to harmonies–and finally how incredibly, obscenely, enough-is-enoughly Neal’s Jesus ballads have gotten old. I love so much of Morse’s work; I’ve defended his religious (read: sometimes preachy) lyrics a hundred times. But seriously. “For Such a Time” is terrible, the same as Sola’s “Heaven in My Heart” is terrible or Lifeline’s “God’s Love.” We get it: life could mean so much more, there’s hope, okay. Now how about a metaphor?

But enough negative. Bonuses are allowed to be patchy. And besides it and the final 11 minutes of disc 1, I really love this album. I awaited it and wasn’t just not let down but physically excited after my second listen, the way the band was able to surprise me while still managing to be exactly what I imagine when I think of them.

On ProgArchives they say that giving an album 5 stars means that it’s “essential.” So no, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that about The Whirlwind. But all the guys are at the top of their game here; Stolte’s guitar work is humbling (see his solo in “The Wind Blew Them All Away”), Neal’s vocals are some of the best of his career (see “Lay Down Your Life”), Portnoy’s intense as ever and Trewavas drives the piece through his bass grooves. It definitely has its soft spots, but as a love letter to throwback prog and a testament to the power of evolution, The Whirlwind is near perfect.

THE WHIRLWIND will be available in two formats:
A Regular Edition Single CD of the entire 77 minute Epic as well as a 2-CD Special Edition containing a Bonus Disc with 8 newly recorded Studio Tracks.
(4 new Transatlantic compositions and 4 Cover Songs)

The Track Listing for the Special Edition is:

Disc One:
THE WHIRLWIND

Disc Two:

1. SPINNING
2. LENNY JOHNSON
3. FOR SUCH A TIME
4. LENDING A HAND
5. THE RETURN OF THE GIANT HOGWEED (Genesis)
6. A SALTY DOG (Procol Harum)
7. I NEED YOU (America / The Beatles)
8. SOUL SACRIFICE (Santana)

TRANSATLANTIC‘S THE WHIRLWIND is currently scheduled for the following release dates:

October 23rd 2009: Germany, Austria, Switzerland
October 26th 2009: Europe
October 27th 2009: North America”

I wrote in full about the upcoming album in April – “TRANSATLANTIC FLIES AGAIN!!!”

Doesn’t matter what I say about these guys. I could tell you that they’re the worst band on the planet. I could say their music is laughable. But by God if they’re not manipulating the hell out of me with this release-a-new-grain-of-teaser-information-every-other-day marketing scheme. Say what you want about them, but bottom line: they’ve got me saying something.

Their latest grain is the track list for the cover album that will come included in the Special Edition of June 23rd’s Black Clouds and Silver Linings.

Honestly, even in A Change of Seasons, I’ve never been blown away by their covers. They’re cool, but more of a novelty for the fans than something truly new or exciting. They are doing a suit from QUEEN’s Sheer Heart Attack album, though, and I have to say, I did get a little giddy when I read that. I won’t lie to you, a flutter of giddiness did pepper through these loins. The covers might not be earth shattering, but I’d say they’ll definitely be contributing to the “Silver” around all those nasty, murky, ominous “Black Clouds.”

Leading up to Black Clouds‘ big day, each cover will be released individually–through iTunes–each with its own art to pop up all tiny and shadowed in your iPod’s two-incher. “Stargazer,” from RAINBOW’S 1976 Rainbow Rising, is the first single; it’s available now, and its art, dare I say, reminds me of a videogame I used to play back in the day on my family’s DOS system, called Scorched Earth. In the summers I’d hop onto the computer with my friends and turn into a ball of colored pixels with a line sticking out of it (AKA: a tank), and I’d use geography and physics (AKA: barrel angle and power) to shoot other tiny balls of pixels on mountainsides or in wide, rocky fields with Nukes and MIRVs and leapfrog bombs. We used to call it “Tank Battle.“

I’d like to think of “Stargazer’s” cover art as DREAM THEATER’s subtle homage to Tank Battle and a simpler time. …Yeah, I think I’m going to stick with that.

The songs and their covers will be releasing periodically, but this will be the last time I write about DREAM THEATER probably until Black Clouds is out. They’ve had their way with me more than enough times this past month or so.

01. Stargazer – RAINBOW
02. Tenement Funster/Flick of the Wrist/Lily of the Valley – QUEEN
03. Odyssey – DIXIE DREGS
04. Take Your Fingers From My Hair – ZEBRA
05. Larks’ Tongues In Aspic (Part II) – KING CRIMSON
06. To Tame A Land – IRON MAIDEN

Straight from the horse’s mouth (Mike Portnoy’s the horse) about DT’s upcoming release: “Imagine a DREAM THEATER album with ‘A Change Of Seasons’, ‘Octavarium’, ‘Learning To Live’, ‘Pull Me Under’ and ‘The Glass Prison’… all on one album… COULD YOU HANDLE IT?? Excited? I sure am!!!!”

So there you have it. Nothing to worry about. Portnoy says that DT’s new album, Black Clouds and Silver Linings (June 23) is not only going to be good, but a collection of all your favorites. How intense.

I want to like these guys (see my April 2nd ProgBeat, “Hopefully More Silver…”). But they’re seriously making it hard. After Score–their amazing 20th Anniversary concert DVD in ‘06 that sampled their most melodic and anti-”metal” offerings–it’s like they went in a different direction. Remembering back to Score–the way they chose songs like the soft and unassuming black sheep “Vacant” from the otherwise all in-your-face Train of Thought album for the setlist–it’s feels like a farewell show to a bulk of their original fans, the ones who loved them for the finesse they mixed with their signature crazy musicianship. It’s as though in that show DT were acknowledging what it was about them that always proved that they weren‘t a “Progressive Metal” band, and played those tracks for one last time. Score feels like a final hoorah to me, some sort of last wave goodbye where only one of the parties knows that when they leave, they’re leaving forever.

After it, they signed up with Roadrunner Records and tried to make it big with Systematic Chaos, and now their 10th studio release Black Clouds and Silver Linings. But it’s not the fact that these guys are trying to make it a bit more into the mainstream that kills me; it’s not that Systematic Chaos and Black Clouds are full of tracks called “The Count of Tuscany” or “The Dark Eternal Knight;” it’s not even that they actually are slowly becoming the modern-day face of prog with this new stuff. It’s the fact that their new material is just so uninspired, so undisciplined, and even just plain boring.

The music video for their first Black Clouds single, “The Rite of Passage,” says it all. The speeding guitar solo without a hint of melody, the red monks with 300-esque bad guy masks, the faux-mood, and wasted LaBrie vocals, and can’t-take-it-seriously content, and…oh, forget it. This is what I was afraid of. DREAM THEATER isn’t what they were in the ’90s. They’re not trying anything new. They’re stuck in a rut of self-productions, with stellar individual musicians but no lyrical or compositional leaders. And if “Rite of Passage” is any indication, Black Clouds probably should be titled Systematic Chaos II.

And now I’m disheartened. It’s hard to watch a band I once loved dying like this.

Then in 2005 Octavarium came. I read all about it, listened to the audio teasers they posted online, got pumped about the 25-minute epic that closed out the album and imagined the chills I’d feel on hearing LaBrie scream that final “Trapped inside this Oc-ta-var-i-uuummm!” in context with the rest of the song. Long story short, I did get some chills–it’s hard not to with LaBrie’s range–and there were parts of the album that really did payoff. “Root of All Evil” was a great, rocking segue between this and Train of Thought; “These Walls” was a fun little song with a great keyboard line; “Octavarium” had its moments; and “Sacrificed Sons” was a grower, one that went from the trying-to-be-topical cheesiness of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence’s “The Great Debate” to actually pretty powerful the more times you heard it. It wasn’t all a downer, but something was missing. The album felt incredibly conscious of itself, with uninspired “soft” songs placed in the mix to either make the CD “balanced” or appeal to wider audiences. Either way, it just wasn’t organic.

Then, after voicing their discontent with Atlantic, their then-record label, for not making them famous enough, DREAM THEATER knew it was time to get serious. They joined Roadrunner Records (the company behind SLIPKNOT, OPETH, MEGADEATH, NICKELBACK…), grew mustaches and beards and dyed their hair black–then made Systematic Chaos, their “metal” album. The problem with this piece is that DREAM THEATER simply isn’t a metal band. As much as I love LaBrie, he doesn’t have the voice for it. As much as I love Rudess, he doesn’t have the patience to just sit in the background making layers. And as much as I love Petrucci, I think he needs a structure to keep him somewhat boxed in, to allow him his complex and interesting riffs but cut him off before he goes into another solo.

Systematic Chaos was a bust. They did metal better in Train of Thought and hard/soft juxtapositions better in Six Degrees. It wasn’t that the record was devoid of all intrigue, only that it set out with the wrong goals. Prog musicians should stop trying to be accepted by the mainstream; it’s never going to happen, not really. They should only focus on making something new, testing their limits–isn’t that why they got into the business in the first place?

A song like “The Dark Eternal Knight” is a perfect example of them floundering. This is a “dark” song, a “metal” song, it’s got heavy distortion and anger in excess–all the elements are there for those Headbangers Ball fans. But it’s also nearly 9 minutes long, with solos one after the other that scream, “This is Prog/Metal! Can’t you tell? Watch how fast I can play…”

It’s just the thing DEVIN TOWNSEND satirized in his Ziltoid the Omniscient album, when Ziltoid proclaims himself “The greatest guitar player that has ever lived!” then goes into a wild and frantic, high-octane solo, telling us to “Check this out,” then confidently spouting, “Simple,” as if he were unbuckling his belt after a great meal.

But, DREAM THEATER did get into Rock Band and Guitar Hero. That must mean they’re doing something right. …Right?

So now it’s six years after Train of Thought, after they’ve put out their compilation album (complete with radio edits and “singles”)–Dream Theater’s Greatest Hit (…& 21 Other Cool Songs)–and they’re releasing their newest: Black Clouds and Silver Linings, on June 23. And I’m honestly trying to be optimistic.

I want to like DREAM THEATER again. I respect the hell out of these guys. When they’re on, they’re really on, there’s no doubt about that. But it’s just a matter of them deciding to spread their artistic wings again rather than their commercial ones. I think one of the worst things a group can do is decide who they are; and I’ve heard Portnoy tell interviewers on multiple occasions that DT is his “metal band.”

Is Images and Words metal? Is Scenes from a Memory? Is the second disc of Six Degrees?

Maybe I just don’t see it.

Along with their standard release of the album, they’ll also be offering a 3-Disc Special edition, including a full cut of instrumental mixes and a CD of six cover songs. They’ll also be shooting a video for their single, “A Rite of Passage,” in late March.

I like instrumental mixes. I just got FROST’s* latest record, Experiments in Mass Appeal, in Special Edition, and the instrumental mixes are surprisingly illuminating. It’s like a whole new album. But I still can’t shake the feeling that this is just another ploy–just like the concert CDs and DVDs they release after every tour, and their half-assed Greatest Hits release. And whether its strobe lights, black & white, whatever, music videos are lame, and DREAM THEATER music videos are lamer

But…I’m trying to stay optimistic.

DREAM THEATER made (probably)their best record when it was do or die. It basically came down to them either making an album that the public and the record company could believe in, or them getting new jobs. Scenes from a Memory is what DREAM THEATER should be. They should have restraint and build onto melodies; they should create a mood, not force one, not fall into one determined by the the amount of hair on their face or holes in their jeans.

I don’t think anyone can say that DREAM THEATER takes themselves too seriously (have you seen Rudess’s Halo Brute Shot Keytar, or heard the “Jingle Bells” interlude in “Octavarium”?), but I just don’t want them to turn into a spectacle. Sure, it’s about the show, and about technicle achievements and about the “wow” factor. But it’s also about quality music, plain and simple.

In this new release, I just want to be surprised. That’s all I ask. And maybe this new cover art, which is strangely remniscent of ones past (think Awake), is some kind of hint at a return to form? I really hope so.

I want to believe in these guys again. They have absolutely nothing to prove–except that they can keep moving forward.

Track List:
1. A Nightmare to Remember
2. A Rite of Passage
3. Wither
4. The Shattered Fortress
5. The Best of Times
6. The Count of Tuscany