IMAGES AND WORDS

Dream Theater

Progressive Metal

4.31 | 3171 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Whether this is Dream Theater's best album or not is merely a matter of taste (I'd prefer Awake above this one), but I think this is at least their most historically important one.

Remember that it was only 1992 and Dream Theater's brand of mixing old-fashioned prog melodies (Yes etc.) with modern metal's heaviness (Metallica etc.) in absolute virtuoso fashion (Rush etc.). Progressive metal wasn't completely new anymore but most previous apparences had been closer to the pure metal side.

I&W still contains some almost AOR-songs, a phenomenon that would disappear from their music over the next years. However, the majority of the album is made up from extended heavy tracks with long solos, odd time signatures etc. The best examples of these are Pull me under, Under a glass moon and particularly closer Learning to live. In the mid-tempo section especially Surrounded is very good.

Although my highest enthusiasm with this band has faded out a bit over the years (also on this disc I feel some passages are a bit too clinical and too less music-like), this disc is still a classic.

Casartelli | 4/5 | 2007-4-28

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