Dream Theater Images and Words

      This isn't a jazz album or something that I listen to all the time. In fact, I haven't been listening to any rock or metal music lately at all, preferring to listen to jazz-free jazz mostly. But this album is so good! Within the last two days I've listened to it twice. The highlight of the album for me is the very beginning, a song called Pull Me Under. This song is so heavy and so catchy at the same time. Its like a progressive metal Beatles band. They're all so skilled as musicians that they're almost as talented musically as jazz musicians. The guitar and keyboards really stand out the most. John Petrucci (guitar) is known to all guitarists and has such a mastery of the instrument. Being a guitar player myself, I see how great of a musician he is. His guitar playing really puts a stamp on the band and I can tell that he's one of main composers for the band. He's a complete shredder with these insane solos but his rhythm is really good too.
     There are a lot of rock ballads on this album. I see it as a good thing though because if everything was just super fast and technical all the time it would get old fast. Even though this album was made in 1992 it has all the rock music cliches that the 80s had, especially with the harmonic vocabulary from the band. They were probably reaching out to a bigger audience at that stage in their career. They were a super young band at that time and  this was the first album made with singer James La Brie. I can tell how great a singer LeBrie was when he was a young man as opposed to being an old man now. The more recent Dream Theater still has plenty of musical theatrics from the singing just isn't so great. From what I've heard of the band this was their most commercial album thus being their best selling album.
     I just thought I'd mention this album because its getting me back into listening to rock again. I'm a big jazz guy but before I was a jazzer I was a rocker. I've kind of come to not see rock music as being all that great but when I see great musicians like Dream Theater I can see the greatness in rock. If you've never heard of Dream Theater you should definitely listen to this album first. It's a great opening to their vast output. I have their most recent album but I wasn't really too thrilled with what I heard. But this album is great! Give it a listen and see for yourself.