Der schönste Tag in einem jungen Leben…
Und auf einmal sprechen Dich die Jungs von Metallica an und bieten an, als Vorgruppe aufzutreten…
Review: Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn of Events
Update: I’ll raise my score to 8,5 of 10. Why? I have been listening constantly and liking most songs more and more. Still no 10, because I still think that you can hear that writing took place without Mangini. But the album has definitely entered my top 5 DT album list.
After the first listen, I was ready to put all my dismay into reviewing this album that I was very much looking forward to, especially since Black Cloud & Silver Linings was the first Dream Theater album in a long time that I really liked. However, after giving it some thought (and some more ear-time), I am not so sure anymore. Some primers: I have been listening to Dream Theater since some time between Images & Words and Awake. From the Awake tour to Scenes from our Memories I have seen every tour, sometimes even caught more than one show. Collected countless live tapes back in the days. Watched “The Spirit Carries on” relieved and fascinated. Favorite albums are I&W, Awake and Scenes from a Memory.
When I read the early reviews and many interviews and two things started bugging me: The constant comparison of the new tracks with older hits, and the fact that they wrote the album without the drummer. Let’s do a quick run-down of the songs before I cast my verdict.
On the Back of Angels – The teaser track. I didn’t get it at first, but after more than 10 listens I think it works quite nice, opening up the ears for what’s to come.
Build me Up, Break me Down – Think Linkin Park meets Dream Theater. It’ll go down as ADToE’s You not me, very radio-friendly. And no, I am not a fan of LaBrie going back to the screaming department.
Lost Not Forgotten – People will say the opening sounds like Under a Glass Moon, and it does. A lot. But then it doesn’t match the variation of the original. After some high-speed wanking the song really starts, and is not my favorite. This song shows the missing red thread of the album, actually the song has not red thread in itself…
This is the Life – This is actually a beautiful song. Great melody that highlights LaBrie’s vocals. Balladesque, not as dreary as Wither, nice guitar solo.
Bridges in the Sky – (Formerly titled The Shaman). I don’t care much for the chorus hookline nor the lyrics I have to say, but basically all this is just build up to a long instrumental section.
Outcry – Finally a guitar riff to my liking. Not quite About to Crash nor Finally Free, but very catchy.
Far from Heaven – A real ballad, no drums at all. Really beautiful melody, I like the lyrics as well as the string sections.
Breaking all Illusions – Great song, including the instrumental section. Long. I like.
Beneath the Surface – Another ballad. Also catchy.
So, what’s my early verdict? I am sure composing without a drummer partly lead to two songs no drums at all and an additional ballad. I like those three songs. I have an issue with the other songs though. Nothing against Mangini’s playing but if anybody had doubts whether he’d be able to fill Portnoy’s shoes he won’t find the answer on this album. Sure he can play it all, but the drum parts are somewhat disconnected in the song structure. They don’t sound programmed per se (although that’s how they wrote the songs, with a drum computer), but I am sure the songs would have sounded much better if Mangini had been part of the composition progress. Many of the songs sound great from Petrucci, Myung and Rudess’s point of view, and then the said “ok, what can we do with the drums here”. Melody-wise and also guitar sound-wise I felt myself thinking about Scenes from a Memory quite often, unfortunately the composition isn’t quite there.
Concluding, this is not a bad album. But it also isn’t the holy grail of prog and “return to DT as it should be”. I’d say 7 of 10 points, and please consider to include Mangini in the composition process next time.
Review: Symphony X – Iconoclast
Four long years of wait are over as New Jersey progressive rockers Symphony X have released their new studio album Iconoclast. After a couple of run-throughs it feels like it was worth the wait, Iconoclast delivers the key ingredients of Symphony X’s music at its best: A great hook line that haunts you after two listens and strong guitar riffs that rock’n'roll all over the place.
Dehumanized, Heretic and especially Children of a Faceless God are prime examples for these classical treats although the music on Iconoclast feels more diverse as albums past, you can hear Metallica-like riffs as well as straight forward heavy rock. Electric Messiah has a glorious sing-along-chorus as well, over all the album sounds less dark than its predecessor Paradise Lost, but that may well be due to the theme also. The classic rhythmic cascades a la The Accolade from the 1997 Devine Wings of Tragedy album are not as ‘visible’ as I would have liked, but as far as riffing goes, Iconoclast lives up to the old records, meanwhile sounding fresh and 2011.
So far the only downside if I have to call it that is the 10 minute opening title track iconoclast which isn’t as rounded as most other tracks. Maybe it’ll just take another 2 listens to warm up, maybe not, we’ll see.
Review: Protest the Hero – Scurrilous
I just love it when a piece of music just totally grabs your attention in way that makes you ignore the other 15,3 GB of music and podcasts on you iPod. If memory serves correctly Protest the Hero‘s first album was on a Best albums of the year-entry by Mike Portnoy. And I loved that too. Scurrilous is just a party for your ears, if you like progressive music, obviously. The German wikipedia page says mathcore but I don’t see them that extreme, let’s say technical prog metal but with very catchy melodies and songs. The songs on Scurrilous don’t sound like ABABCDAEFGGZZABCDCA, like let’s-throw-theses-parts-together – to me they sound like songs and interestingly the vocals play a big role in this. No burping and none of this high pitch screaming which you both can’t understand, enunciation it seems was part of the idea. But make no mistake, the voice is still awesomely powerful.
All in all, Scurrilous sounds like they are having fun. To my ears there is also some irony here and there, in the music as well as in the lyrics which is appreciated.
Check it out!
Dream Theater took their time to announce their new drummer. But it was good.
As you may or may not know, US prog rock/metal band Dream Theater recently announced that their drummer of 25 years, Mike Portnoy, had left the band. If you’ve never heard of Dream Theater, they have a huge fan base that fills venues with very little advertising needed, and have sold more than 10m records.1
The social media impact of the announcement of Portnoy leaving Dream Theater IS worth noting. Three posts on his Facebook wall from that September day gathered 4,300, 3,000, and 2,500 comments (comments, not likes) in the first 24 hrs. On Dream Theater’s wall three similar posts gathered more than 1,000 comments each. A video interview for online publication The Crooked step dubbed as “Last interview with Mike Portnoy before he left Dream Theater got 48,000 views in the first 36 hours. I guess it is safe to say that the fan base was awakened to a degree every marketer is dreaming of.
Just let me catch my breath…
I’ve heard the promises
I’ve seen the mistakes
I’ve had my fair share of tough breaks
I need a new voice, a new law, a new way
Take the time, reevaluate
It’s time to pick up the pieces,
Go back to square one
I think it’s time for a change2
Auditions for a new drummer to replace Portnoy were held in October 2010, but information was very scarce. Fans new that a new drummer had been found and thanks to a tweet by Dream Theater guitarist John Petrucci they knew that the band was in the studio, recording the follow up album to Black Clouds & Silver Lining, which was IMHO one of if not the best release since 1999 Scenes from a Memory.3
The band updated fans that the newly written material was great and that they couldn’t wait to share it, but even at that point, the new drummer hadn’t been revealed yet.
There is something that I feel
To be something that is real
I feel the heat within my mind
And craft new changes with my eyes
Giving freely wandering promises
A place with decisions I’ll fashion
I won’t waste another breath
Late April Roadrunner Records released a trailer for “The Spirit Carries On 2011″ documentary which was to shed light on the auditions and reveal the new drummer. Again, highly passionate fans spoke their minds, at first with very mixed reactions from “great stuff” to “why this American Idol format, tell us who it is already”.
The unbroken spirit
Obscured and disquiet
Finds clearness this trial demands
And at the end of this day sighs an anxious relief
For the fortune lies still in his hands
If there’s a pensive fear, a wasted year
A man must learn to cope
If his obsession’s real,
Suppression that he feels must turn to hope
In the end I would definitely label the band’s gamble (quote director) as huge success. Now, a week later, each of the three parts has 450,000-640,00 views, even the separate uploads for German fans gathered close to 10,000 views per episode (apparently, the band wasn’t able to release a video with their own music on YouTube without YouTube’s Warner Brothers algorithm going off , go figure). Fans’ feedback to the documentary is mainly positive, on Facebook as well as on John Petrucci’s forum and – on former drummer Mike Portnoy’s forum. Even his fans are fine with the band’s choice and seemingly support “the new guy”, Mike Mangini.
Life is no more assuring than love
(It’s time to take the time)
There are no answers from voices above
(It’s time to take the time)
You’re fighting the weight of the world
And no one can save you this time
Close your eyes
You can find all that you need in your mind
Mike Portnoy himself, although he was heartbroken about the choice he had to make, seems to have a very creative and fulfilled year so far and has already completed work on three projects/albums. In addition, although most likely somewhat legally bound, he has been a good sport about the process. Not a negative word in public but then I am sure he was on the phone with John Petrucci and had something to say about the choices.
I close my eyes
And feel the water rise around me
Drown the beat of time
Let my senses fall away
I can see much clearer now, I’m blind
In closing, some words on the music part of the auditions. Personally, I would have narrowed it down to the same three drummers in the first round, Mike Mangini, Marco Minnemann and Peter Wildoer, and also come to the same conclusion. It may have had to do with the story arch and editing, but Mangini just exuded tremendous amounts of confidence when playing Dream Theater’s songs. He played them perfectly, didn’t interpret too much but still made them his own with ease. An incredible amount of preparation involved and channeled through an itch to play drums, to not disappoint, to make the band feel at home.4 Have a look at 13:10 of the clip and see for yourself how confident he is, but in a good way.
Dream Theater — The Spirit Carries On Episode 1 – MyVideo
Find all you need in your mind
If you take the time
Find all you need in your mind
If you take the time
Final words: Using social media successfully to get your message across, to engage with fans (be it of a band or a brand), to (at the end of the day) sell your product, requires time. It takes longer than a 6-months-ad-flight. It takes more than 12 months of heavy tweeting. Dream Theater (and Mike Portnoy inparticular) has worked very hard for 25 years to build that relationship, and used social media tools from a very early stage. Only because of that, they realize these kinds of engagement levels.
- Portnoy leaving opened a whole lot of commentary, fans taking sides obviously, and vehemently, I also assume that only 20% of what really happened was in the press which I think is a good thing. Just to hint that matters are more complicated than the one sentence states. Things will have been said to each other and God knows that everything that has been said by the band in the documentary has two sides. But this article is neither about that nor about the fact that Dream Theater is probably the band most people would have name if asked what my fav band is. [↩]
- all quotes are lyrics from Dream Theater’s ‘Take the Time’ of the 1992 album Images & Words [↩]
- As I said, I am a huge fan. I fell in love ca. 93 and saw Dream Theater live for the first time in 1995. I am one of those geeks who went to several concerts of a tour (Scenes from a Memory tour), but then got turned off by a slight change in the musical style on following albums and high prices for tickets and merchandising. During my early years I collected bootlegs like crazy, had at one point close to 60 discs in addition to every studio release and side project available for sale. Don’t forget, almost all of this was pre-napster. Highlight of my fanboy-dom was when thanks to my job at a local roadie and event security provider I got to hang around soundcheck all day, collecting autographs and translating a newspaper article to James, as well as a meet&greet organized by the German fan club which I am of course a long-time member of. This not only sounds incredibly geeky, it only gets better if you consider that from the time I fell in love until 2001 or so the main communications medium among fans was the Ytsejam mailing list with it’s very own culture. [↩]
- Apparently, Mike Mangini holds several world records for fastest play with hands and feet on one or the other drum. I didn’t know this until after I watched the clips. I know him from his work on Extreme’s “Waiting for the punchline”, an album which drum-wise grooves a lot and isn’t that technical, and with Steve Vai, obviously a musician’s dream. [↩]
English Music: killswitch engage review times of grace
by Sebastian
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Review: Times of Grace – The Hymn of a Broken Man
