FALLING INTO INFINITY

Falling Into Infinity is Dream Theater's fourth album and so far the only album to feature Derek Sherinian on keyboards after the departure of Kevin Moore. As normal, there is something different about this album that doesn't exist on other Dream Theater records, unfortunately in this case it's the fact that there is a lot of straightforward hard rock here, some of it good some of it bad.

Truth be told, there's only five songs on this album that I consider to be Prog (New Millennium, Peruvian Skies, Hells Kitchen, Lines In The Sand and Trial Of Tears) the rest of the album seems to be broken into a series of short hard rock songs and cheesy, insipid ballads. This is the unfortunate result of meddling on the part of the record company that wished to see Dream Theater becoming more commercial (you'd think that these companies would have worked out that that hardly ever works out well by now). As a result this album is very patchy, some ideas here could have really come out with great music but, alas, were are stuck with patches of real mediocrity.

I'll keep it simple, the really bad songs on here are You Not Me, Hollow Years, Take Away My Pain and Anna Lee. These songs remind me of Asia's usual output in the 80's, dull and insipid and the main reason that I don't listen to this album that much. The other none-prog songs on this album (Burning My Soul and Just Let Me Breath) are simply hard rock songs with a few metal sensibilities and the odd moment that shows that your listening to one of the leading prog bands of the 1990's. I must stress that these songs aren't bad at all and actually really catchy songs, both lyrically and musically, that stay in your mind after hearing them. Very enjoyable stuff.

The best songs here are quite definitely the five I mentioned first. Of these, the epics Lines In The Sand and Trial Of Tears are the best and among some of the best songs that Dream Theater have ever recorded, classics that hold their own against Learning To Live, Metropolis and The Mirror. Lines In The Sand is particularly interesting for the cameo of Kings X vocalist Doug Pinnick, who offers a much deeper, richer voice to offset that of LaBrie in the chorus and it works well. The quality of Trial Of Tears is no surprise as anyone that has heard Dream Theater will be aware of just how good a song writer John Myung is. Of the other three, New Millennium should have been a great track but I find that the production here drains some of the spark out of the song, especially from Myung's intro on the Chapman Stick. Hells Kitchen is a nice instrumental that builds up nicely before flowing out, however it is the shortest track on the album at 4 minutes and could have been longer. Peruvian Skies shows that Dream Theater know how to build a song up, starting with a gloomy main melody and building up from their.

Overall I'll give this album 3 stars due to the fact that a few really good songs are badly offset with some of Dream Theater's worst songs and this album isn't entirely prog so I couldn't give it 5 stars in good conscience as it lacks in this department.