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Dream Theater - Images and Words CD (album) cover

IMAGES AND WORDS

Dream Theater

 

Progressive Metal

4.31 | 3169 ratings

From Progarchives.com, the ultimate progressive rock music website

FishyMonkey
Prog Reviewer
4 stars Well, Dream Theater's second album is definitely a strong offering. I'd say about 5 of the songs are excellent, two are pretty good and one is bad. Where this album succeeds thougyh, it really succeeds. This is what prog metal is all about -- strong melodies, great musicianship, mindblowing solos and long epic songs. On paper it's great, but the execution is flawed on some songs like Learning To Live and Pull Me Under. Other times though, Dream Theater really pulls through with one hell of a song.

The first song, Pull Me Under, starts out promising enough, but quickly falls into a repetitive melody and is all-together much too straight-forward for my tastes. It's nice, but not that great. Another Day is a strong ballad pulled off very well, with one of my favorite Petrucci moments of all time in the video. Very nice song, much better than Pull Me Under. The next song, Take The Time is definitely the strongest song on the album with a killer begginning. The rest of the song doesn't get boring either! Clean riffs and excellent guitar playing all the way through. This is a contender for one of my favorite Dream Theater songs of all time, definitely.

Unfortunately, the next piece, Surrounded, falls flat on it's face. Where Another Day succeeded gloriously, Surrounded dies in. Surrounded does have some good elements, like a pretty good melody, pretty good lyrics, and a pretty good progression. Unfortunately, everything else kinda sucks. It's not terrible, just not very good at all. The next piece though, Metropolis pt. 1 -- the joke that started it all -- is a VERY strong song. Gets kinda cheesy after awhile and is bogged down by a way too long solo section (HOLY CRAP! Not only did they carry over lyrics and meanings to Scenes from a Memory, they also carried over the flaws like boring wankery and cheesiness after a few listens!). It's still an excellent piece, though not nearly as good as Take The Time, Learning To Live and...

Under A Glass Moon! This piece always manages to get me going, just like Take The Time. Such an awesome piece. The melodies are perfect and the guitar parts are slick. Nothing feels forced, either! Hooray! It's clear sailing from here on, with Wait For Sleep being a pretty and haunting ballad, one of the prettiest DT has ever written. Learning To Live is the classic DT epic, with my favorite Labrie movement ever in the middle (the high pitched wailing that goes incredibly high -- some may hate it, but I love it, especially when he pulled it off live) and great lyrics. I mean GREAT lyrics...to me at least. The only problem is a long solo section the drags it down like Metropolis pt. 1.

But one more thing: the classic question of is it prog? Well, sometimes yes, definitely like Learning To Live and Metropolis pt. 1, while other stuff is heavy/thrash metal with some great prog influences like Take The Time and Under A Glass Moon, while finally Pull Me Under and Another Day are just straight rock. So yea, half the time it's good prog...some may find this unacceptable, but ot the more open-minded of us, it's fine because the whole album is quite good. 4.2 rating.

FishyMonkey | 4/5 |

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