METROPOLIS PART 2 - SCENES FROM A MEMORY

After the monumental "Images and Words" in 1992, Dream Theater didn't manage to make such a complete album like this one. This album was made to be a masterpiece. And with no surprise, it is the continuation of the unfinished suite from "Images and Words". It has everything an album should have: great instrumental work, good melodies, a great story, good production. And it is a unit: we can figure clearly one beginning, middle and one end. It is possible you won't see the magnificent at first listening, because of the complexity of the music; you have to build the puzzle. It's definitely not fast food. But once you get into it, you'll never quit, believe.

The instrumental work is spectacular, no one finds better than this anywhere! Just for this reason, this album could be a masterpiece. The technical quality of the band line-up is unquestionable. The architecture obeys to an opera rock album; it has 2 acts which subdivide in several scenes. It has an interesting story, about past lives. The main character has repetitive dreams about a girl, who calls him, and he is compelled to make a hypnotic session with a therapist to discover the reason, like he knew he will solve his own life.

So the album starts with Regression - a hypnotic session which makes us, the listeners, get into the ambience of the story. It's an original overture for the album, and it fits so well! The voice of the therapist is perfect: you can feel yourself being relaxed, like you're being prepared to listen to a monumental suite. As this happens, a small and beautiful melody appears slowly, with acoustic guitar, introducing the album. With Overture 1928 the album starts truly. Heavy architecture, resembling RUSH, YES and metal influences. The first guitar solo (1:35), is magnificent. If you like the emotional guitar solo's of PINK FLOYD, you certainly won't regret this. This guitar solo is going to reappear in One last Time of the second act, culminating wonderfully the emotional heaviness of this music. Wonderful crying guitar!

In fact, this album has lot of deep emotional parts. We can find beautiful and complex piano melodies, particularly in the beginning of Fatal Tragedy, on One last time and Spirit Carries On just to mention some. This last is the lyric explosion of the album: Labrie sings "If I die tomorrow I'll be alright because I believe that after we're gone, the spirit carries on" as the character feels death coming. accomplished by a remarkable melody. We can find some good melodies all over the album, like in Fatal Tragedy, Through her eyes (which assents in the album like Floyd's The Great Gig In The Sky in the Dark Side of the Moon) and specially in the last track, Finally Free which ends brilliantly the album, and is my personal favourite. For fans of metal and technique, you can find in the second part of Fatal Tragedy the highlight of the album, with heavy guitar riffs and drums, psychedelic guitar and keyboard solos; but also in Beyond this life, the crazy Dance of Eternity and Home. In this last, Rudess imitates the oriental guitar citara on his keyboard. Perhaps the band took too long their technical experiments in this music (who blames anyway?).

The negative aspects in this album are the excessive technical quality of its members, (they can exaggerate in some parts), by other hand, Labrie's voice can be hard to accept. Though a major force of technicism, feeling and songwriting, the album is not a brilliant force of originality.