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Dream Theater - Images and Words CD (album) cover

IMAGES AND WORDS

Dream Theater

 

Progressive Metal

4.31 | 3169 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

Hector Enrique
Prog Reviewer
5 stars Although since the mid-eighties there were bands like FATES WARNING, QUEENSRHYE, and SAVATAGE that took influences from progressive music and its intricate developments and progressions to combine them with the sharp guitars of heavy metal and of course, its inevitable touch of sensitivity, it is since the irruption of DREAM THEATER that Progressive Metal takes off as a new dimension of nuances and colors to explore, and Images and Words, DT's second album after the conventional When Dream and Day Unite, was the catalyst and cornerstone in this dizzying way to understand and create music.

From the dramatic and powerful Pull Me Under, a description of the fatality of the Shakespearean Hamlet, the album stands out for the splendid unfolding both in stormy seas (the excellent Take the Time and Metropolis Part 1, which 7 years later would be developed as part 2 in their extraordinary Metropolis - Scenes from a Memory, and Under a Glass Moon), as in more peaceful waters (the sentimental ballad Another Day with a pair of introspective appearances by Jay Beckenstein of Spyro Gyra on sax, the outstanding Surrounded, a melody that begins and ends with the whispering of James Labrie and an accomplice piano of Kevin Moore, running through an arduous and euphoric soundscape, or the brief Wait for Sleep, one of the band's most naked compositions).

The important presence and relevance of their influences are confirmed by the theme that closes Images and Words, the super progressive Learning to Live, which in its more than 11 minutes wonderfully fuses the devastating METALLICA with the crushing rhythmic lines of the most vertiginous RUSH, YES, and similar legends.

And as in the whole album, John Petrucci is impeccable on the guitars, Moore is exquisite on the keyboards, and they are supported by the sober bass of John Myung and the vigorous drums of Mike Portnoy.

Fundamental work of Progressive Metal.

Hector Enrique | 5/5 |

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