: Jordan Blum
: Dream Theater Every Album, Every Song
: Sonicbond Publishing
: 9781789524291
: 1
: CHF 8.80
:
: Musik
: English
: 144
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB

No other band has affected modern progressive metal as deeply or widely as American quintet Dream Theater. Formed at Berklee College of Music as Majesty in 1985 by guitarist John Petrucci, drummer Mike Portnoy, and bassist John Myung, the group have spent thirty years repeatedly pushing new boundaries and reinventing their identity. Although other acts - such as Queensrÿche and Fates Warning - paved the way for the prog-metal subgenre, Dream Theater were, without doubt, the first to meld influences from both metal and progressive rock into a groundbreaking blend of quirky instrumentation, extensively complex arrangements, and exceptional songwriting. Whether with subtly or overtly, they've since left their mark on just about every progressive metal band that has followed.
In this book, Jordan Blum examines every Dream Theater studio album, and their behind-the-scenes circumstances, to explore how the group impacted the genre with each release. Whether classics of the 1990s like Images and Words and Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory, benchmarks of the 2000s like Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and Octavarium, or even thrilling modern efforts like A Dramatic Turn of Events and Distance Over Time, every sequence of albums contributes something crucial to making Dream Theater's legacy nothing short of astonishing.


Jordan Blum is an Associate Editor at PopMatters, holds an MFA in Creative Writing, and is the founder/Editor-in-Chief of The Bookends Review, an independent creative arts journal. He focuses mostly on progressive rock/metal and has contributed to many other publications, including Sonic Perspectives, Paste, Progression, Metal Injection, Rebel Noise, PROG and Sea of Tranquility. He is the author of Jethro Tull On Track, published by Sonicbond in 2019. Finally, he records his own crazy ideas under the pseudonym Neglected Spoon. When he's not focused on any of that, he teaches English courses at various colleges. He lives in Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Chapter2

Images and Words (1992)


Personnel:

James LaBrie: vocals

John Petrucci: guitar, backing vocals

John Myung: bass

Kevin Moore: keyboards

Mike Portnoy: drums, percussion, backing vocals (1)

Jay Beckenstein: soprano saxophone (2)

Larry Freemantle: cover art

David Prater: mixing

Doug Oberkircher: engineer, mixing

Steve Regina: assistant engineer

Produced at BearTracks Studios in Suffern, New York and The Hit Factory in New York City, October – December 1991 by David Prater

UK and US release date: July 1992.

Highest chart places: UK: none, USA: 61

Running time: 57:04

Current edition: ATCO Records 2016 gold& solid red limited edition vinyl

Dream Theater – in addition to almost everyone else who heardWhen Dream and Day Unite upon release – knew that they’d made an enormously forward- thinking and skilful first LP. But, with Mechanic/MCA’s lacklustre aid leading to less than desirable results – not to mention the fact that genres like grunge and rap were becoming immeasurably popular as hair metal died out – the band conceded that some big adjustments were needed for its follow-up to fully flourish. Namely, they needed to change singers and labels, no matter how frustrating, extraneous, or disheartening those processes would be. In spite of facing a lot of chaos along the way, they persevered with a vastly superior record contract and frontman, ensuring that their sophomore sequence would be as monumental as possible. To say that 1992’sImages and Words was a step up would be putting it lightly; more accurately, the album was a colossal evolution, kickstarting whatThe Prog Report founder Roie Avin calls ‘Dream Theater’s reign as the kings of new progressive metal’.

Charlie Dominici’s voice certainly suitedWhen Dream and Day Unite, but the rest of the group remorsefully yet decisively determined that he couldn’t continue with them due to – among other things – him being over ten years older and not having the look they were going for. Shockingly, Dominici was thinking of leaving, too, since the record wasn’t as fruitful as he’d hoped and the rest of the band disliked his suggestions for a more streamlined style. He adds that it was like ‘a marriage’ that’d run its course and couldn’t be saved ‘through talking’, so he felt it was better to ‘bow out gracefully’ following a final performance opening for Marillion at the New York Ritz on 14 November 1989. All these years later, he still thinks of Dream Theater as family and is happy – if not also a tad jealous – about how far they’ve come.

Now faced with a vocalist void, the remaining four members set out to find that perfect singer they’d been searching for all along. At the risk of unnecessary long-windedness, suffice it to say that they tried out roughly 200 people over the next two years or so. Included in that list was Fates Warning’s John Arch, who’d previously critiqued Dominici’s live stage presence to the band and who ultimately decided that he ‘couldn’t make that kind of commitment’ since he had a child on the way. For a while – and reservations fro