IMAGES AND WORDS

Most albums I have to seriously think to myself, whether or not I'm exaggerating when I rate it a 5. But not with this album. I click 5 stars without even thinking. This album is as important as the greatest progressive rock albums ever, Dark Side of the Moon, in the Court of the Crimson King, etc. This album is on that level. The only reason it's not amazingly well known is because Prog has becoming very underground since the 70s, and DT are from the late 80s, and this came out in the early 90s. But this is Dream Theater's equivalent Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and Scenes from a Memory is Dream Theater's The Wall.

The nature of Images & Words is just like what they were called before recording it and WDADU. They were called Majesty, and all of Images & Words sounds extremely Majestic. Perfectly written, very complex and creative, like nothing other, with an amazingly original sound. Each album usually has its certain songs that are amazing, and others than are just pretty good, but on this album, ALL the songs are amazing. Each and every song has segmented parts and creative complex instrumental parts.

Pull Me Under is popular, but it's not as good as it seems, in my opinion. It's an amazing song with a catchy tune, very majestic and surreal sounding, but heavy at the same time. I think it kinda gets a bit old when you hear it repeat itself after a while, because it's probably the slowest song on I&W. Another weird thing is that it ends completely abruptly, mid note. No, there's nothing wrong with your player, the song ends that way. This can be good or bad in certain peoples' eyes, in my personal opinion, it's a humorous kind've ending, but I think Pull Me Under is WAY too epic of a song to have a random abrupt ending like that.

Another day is relaxing to listen to, it's a nice ballad and features a wonderful saxophone in it, by some guy from Spyro Gyra.

Take the Time is one of the catchiest songs on this album, probably the catchiest. It is kinda funky at times, and other times is just very majestic. It's heavy and progressive and surreal sounding, as well.

Surrounded begins with a keyboard part from Kevin Moore, and becomes a nice, optimistic sounding song.

Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper is definitely the best track on this album. It is the most epic track, and features extremely poetic lyrics, wonderful singing, and amazingly progressive instrumental bridges. It sounds majestic, progressive, heavy, and technical/electronic at the same time. This song is one of my favourite Dream Theater songs ever, and had a sequel 8 years later, which emerged as a 20 minute song, but then became a 77 minute album, known as Scenes from a Memory.

Under a Glass Moon is really good, once again, Majestic and surreal sounding, beautiful lyrics with voice singing it, and amazing instrument solos.

Wait for Sleep was Written by Kevin Moore, and it's a Keyboard solo featuring LaBrie singing surreal lyrics. It's very soft and mystical, and is a wonderful intro to another great song on that album,

Learning to live, which is definitely one of the greatest Dream Theater songs ever written. Once again Majestic, this song is very progressive and somewhat heavy, but has surreal lyrics and many parts, one of which reflects the original theme played in Wait for Sleep.

Anyway... All the songs are amazing on this album. This is Dream Theater's Dark Side of the Moon, and is the most important Dream Theater album. James LaBrie's voice is simply fantastic, and is able to hit wonderfully high notes, due to it being recorded before his voice was screwed up from food poisoning. Sounds very majestic and heavy at the same time, although I wouldnl't even call it metal, because the prog influence out shines the metal by a LOT. I wouldn't even call it progressive metal, I'd call it Heavy progresive rock, or progressive rock with slight metal influences. It's not fair that the word metal, when applied to any genre, always becomes the core of the genre. It can never be used as an influence, anything with any little bit of metal is automatically (fill in the black) metal.

This album should satisfy anyone... even if you hate metal, you'll love this album, it's amazing and very majestic. The perfect Dream Theater album, and the most important one, in my opinion.