METROPOLIS PART 2 - SCENES FROM A MEMORY

After a hard time dealing with the Record Label impositions, after releasing an album that put Dream Theater into a dilemma, after fighting against this an some other problems, this musicians from New York let the light bright over one of the most delicious and tasty albums. Enjoying their new acquired complete liberty, Dream Theatertakes the call and goes for everything after Jordan Rudess's arrival. This project is probably the most ambicious of his carrer and finally after 14 years of carreer they achieve their best work.. Scenes From A Memory is an album that starts, develops and finishes in a very sublime way. A story about reincarnation, regressions and betrayals that disinvolves magnifically in 9 acts subdivided in 12 great tracks lyrical, msuical and structurally perfect. Leaving behind all their existencial conflicts and resurrect from the ashes as the Phoenix. Without a doubt the creativity of Jordan Rudess brought freshness and richness to the band in an unsuspected way.

The album opens with a hypnotic therapy session along with the acoustic guitar brought to life by John Petrucci's hands mixing with the voice of James LaBrie and starts creating the atmosphere for the rest of the album.

"Overture 1928" has an very explosive intro that traps and takes you inside of the story. An instrumental track that introduces and shows off its new and highly talented member. A drum groove by Mike Portnoy adds power and class to this theme; this is also the first reference to the first part of "Metropolis" included on the Images & Words, an obligatto violently pushes you to "Strange Dejavu" that can be called as the first chapter of this job and tells you about the first dream of Nicholas about Victoria.

"Through My Words". A transition track made for you to relax and takes you by the hand to continue your still long way throug this job and takes you to Nicholas's dreams. "Fatal Tragedy" is one of the lyrics that better describes each one of the scenes, I'd like to stand out this sog, because John Myung is my favorit lyricist in the band, musically the song is developed with more progressive arrangements than in their previous works taking more Fusion influences especially in this track and in the next one.

"Beyond This Life" mixes in a perfect way some real heavy stuff with very complex progressions and instrumental pieces. Particularly, Petrucci and Rudess doing some unisone licks as the last one did in his previous projects. After the addition of this master mind of Progressive Music, the fusion takes a big part of the influences in this refreshed Dream Theater.

The Pink Floyd influence is another visible thing in this work in tracks very in the Dark Side Of The Moon Style, in which outstands the collaboration by Theresa Thomason as in her duet along John Petrucci in the beginning of "Through Her Eyes", this is a very sentimental song describing the scene in which Nicholas starts to know the reason of his nightmares, dejavus, regressions and some other situations and he has a sour crying in front of Victoria's grave.

An arab rhythm performed between Petrucci and Rudess opens this song called "Home"; which grows as the song goes by following the same Middle East structure and adding some Wah effects to make it more strong and powerful. Rudess experiments going up and down through the same progression tying to find the exit in this landscape where nothing is clear, everything is dark on this part.

Bringing back the rhythm exposed in "Overture 1928", "Dance Of Eternity" follow a very similar line to the structural base of "Metropolis" in its instrumental section, with acrobat passages of each one of the Dream Theater members mixing it with a jazz piece which opens he door for Myung's bass solo.

"One Las Time" is probably one of the climatic moments in the story, where the questions unanswered start to create confusion into Nicholas's head, getting back to the orchestration made in "Strange Dejavu", followed up by an excellent solo by John Petrucci and ended with a piano outro that unchains a rush of more questions realized perfectly in "The Spirit Carries On", and finally Nicholas understands everything and breaks free from all the tension. The song has its best moment during and after the guitar solo and when LaBrie expresses perfectly a feeling of freedom alogn with the Choir.

"Finally Free" is an excellent song that closes the album in a perfect way.

Concluding, "Scenes From A Memory" was the album that put DT in orbit once again in the Progresive Rock World. A very succesful job as for the critics as in the stores, It's about how the magic touch of Jordan Rudess brought this American Band back to life and how 5 brains got together to create this masterpiece.

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