A CHANGE OF SEASONS

To the person reading this : if you have heard about progressive music, know some vague things about it and feel ready to give it a serious try, your first responsibility is to withstand the pressure you are likely to get from all corners about trying Dream Theater first because they're sooooooo good and stuff. And the odds are that someone will try to compel you to listen to A Change of Seasons with its title epic track running for about 24 minutes.

Please allow me to explain why I think you ought to resist this pressure. Dream Theater is not a bad band. They are more good than bad actually. But first, they make metal music with prog influences, not the other way around. And second, when it comes to prog, there are FAR better epic songs than A Change of Seasons.

As a song, A Change of Seasons has some great moments indeed, but also has so many uninspired, long and pointless segments that I just cannot figure how it got so popular and highly regarded. A lesson many progressive bands have learned is to not make an epic, especially that long, if all you have is a couple of brilliant ideas that need to be patched together. It just does not work like this. So, yes there's a great intro, and I notably like the melodical arrangements leading to minute 15 and after, but this is such an inconsistent 24 minutes overall that I find myself waiting for the end most of the time. If you're looking for some nicely orchestrated metal prog with mesmerizing epic compositions and flawless musicianship, I suggest Arena first for instance. A tad softer, but much more complete.

As an album, A Change of Seasons also offers a few live covers made by the band. I actually pretty much like what they did with Elton John's Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding. That's a good job all the way for the whole 10 minutes. But Sir John does get half the credit here...

The other covers, such as Deep Purple's Perfect Strangers or the Led Zeppelin medley, are near irritating.

Big fans of Dream Theater will not want to miss this one so that's obviously not a poor album per se. I can also figure that the good moments of title track are somehow worth it, as well as the Elton John cover, so I'm going to round up my 1.5* assessment to 2*.

As a sidenote, if you insist on starting your progressive journey with Dream Theater material, I rather suggest either Awake, Metropolis Part II or Images and Words.