METROPOLIS PART 2 - SCENES FROM A MEMORY

This album is the most beautiful release of all Dream Theater entire discography, in fact Scenes From A Memory P.II is always powerful and homogeneous, and the clearest example of how mixing prog metal with past influences from certain band from the 70s. The quality of the songs is high all of the time and troughout this work various influences are evident, from Pink Floyd to The Who's Tommy album all with a twist of metal, always with a high level of impact but never too noisy or invadent. Chronologically the album is the first work with Jordan Rudess on Keyboards, and this fact is perfectly reflected in songs like "The Spirit Carries On" and "Finally Free" where the arrangement has been heavily influenced by him. The songs are all great, and dinamically alternated. Scenes From A Memory is a concept album about reincarnation...the main plot in fact deals with the main character of the story (Nicholas) which constantly dreams about a girl (Victoria) and his lover murdered in the 20s by a man, precisely the brother of Victoria's lover, jealous of her. Nicholas with the help of hypnotherapist discover the truth only in the end of the album: he's the reincarnation of Victoria herself. Just before the close of the last song we can hear Nicholas screaming, killed by the Hypnotherapist, the reincarnation of Victoria's assassin. This is the most interesting and beautiful Prog metal album ever, I suggest it to everybody, even to those who dislike Dream Theater, so easily.

A masterpiece of the genre, but not only.

5 stars