PARASOMNIA

The first album since the return of the legendary drummer Mike Portnoy, Dream Theater did not disappoint with their 16th double LP "Parasomnia". I never saw it coming, but this album turned out to be a concept album, not just a theme, but an obscure but interesting story. I was one of the general masses that did not dig the singles (Especially "Midnight Messiah") very much when they were released, it just seemed like "copy and paste" from past records and the lyrics just seemed very? generic? But when I listened to the whole album, all the songs just came together and I enjoyed every moment of it, and that is because the album is musically very connected with many tracks bringing up melodies from others, with the most notable being the chorus from "A Broken Man" brought up in almost every song except the singles and two others. The album starts with the interlude - "In The Arm Of Morpheus", it is an amazing preview of what we are going to experience in the rest of the album with it connecting musical phrases from the other songs, and then it transitions to the first single "Night Terror". "Night Terror" is in my opinion the song with the best chorus, and it is also said that this song was the first one they made after Portnoy returned. "A Broken Man" starts with a Rush-like 5/4 riff, and also ends with it. When I first saw the lyrics of this one, I thought it was another generic song about the trauma of war, but after listening in the context of the whole album, it gets more interesting because we now see that it is a nightmare. "Dead Asleep" was the song that almost made me "Dead Asleep", definitely the most boring song on the album, the nightmare's story's pretty good though. "Midnight Messiah" is the only track where Mike Portnoy writes the lyrics, and you can really see that by phrases like "Strange Deja Vu", not really sure about the transition from the 6/8 verse to the 4/4 chorus. "Are We Dreaming?" is a one-minute track of people saying "Are We Dreaming?), which paved the way for "Bend The Clock". It is another one of those slow Dream Theater ballads that are kinda slow and boring at the start but still win you over with that amazingly emotional Petrucci solo at the end.

The ending 19-minute epic "The Shadow Man Incident" can be considered to be one of my favourite songs from Dream Theater. It starts with a creepy musical box intro with a goofy riff cutting it off, but later in the song it just transcended into an epic orchestral riff. My favourite part of the song has got to be the Jordan Rudess piano solo (probably his best) in the middle, I rocked so hard to that part on my first listen that my head nearly fell off. It has several musical references to Metropolis Pt. II - Scenes From A Memory (my favourite Dream Theater album) like in the interlude, they used the classic synchronized marching rhythm with Portnoy's kick drum doing 4/4 quarter notes in the back, and in the end, you can voices saying "wake up" which can be connected to "open your eyes" in SFAM, and interestingly, at exactly 19:28, there is a male voice saying the phrase, potentially referencing the song "Overture 1928" in SFAM, coincidence? I think not. It is also the song that sorta explained the connections between the other songs.

Speaking about the story, I won't spoil too much but it is basically songs about several nightmares and a man trapped in slumber to experience them, and if its story is actually connected to SFAM, then I think the man trapped is the "Sleeper", and the "Shadow Man" is the spirit of the "Miracle". All in all, I would say this might be my favourite Dream Theater album since Octavarium which was exactly 20 years ago, it's very well done and might be the best album of 2025 yet. (And I have a shimmer of hope that their next album will be Metropolis Pt III.)

Rating: A

Fav Tracks Musically: The Shadow Man Incident Fav Tracks Lyrically: The Shadow Man Incident Worst Tracks: Dead Asleep

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