FALLING INTO INFINITY

Infamously, this is the album Dream Theater made whilst James LaBrie's vocal chords were still on the mend after a nasty food poisoning incident, and he still hadn't recovered his full vocal range. Perhaps that's why to my ears the mix of the album seems to be a bit off - there's several patches where the music threatens to overwhelm the vocals, and I can't help but wonder whether this was down to some sort of attempt to disguise parts where James's performance weren't up to his usual standards.

Then again, the band as a whole seem to be a little put off this time around. The other reason this album is infamous is that it came out at a time when they were at loggerheads with their record company, who wanted them to take their music in a more commercial direction and make another Images and Words. It's an old story, of course, and I'm not one to automatically assume the artist is in the right in these cases - after all, sometimes when people have free reign to pursue their artistic vision without any editorial input they produce horrendous crap - but in this case the band seem to have ended up with the worst of both worlds. The material on the album still isn't that commercially viable because they're still tending towards longer tracks which aren't really ideal for radio play, but their musical approach lacks the technical playfulness and inventiveness of previous works.

On top of all that, you have the inclusion of Derek Sherinian, and boy do you know it. I can't blame the man for wanting to make his presence felt on his first (and, it would turn out, sole) full album with the guys and distinguish his playing style from Kevin Moore's, but his keyboards sound to me a bit overwhelming in the mix and his more laid-back style of playing doesn't seem to be a natural fit with the direction the music is going in.

On the whole, then, a troubled album from Dream Theater - the result of a perfect storm of circumstances. If the label hadn't been breathing down their necks, maybe the band could have found more creative ways to incorporate Derek's playing and compensate for James's vocals. If James's vocal chords hadn't been ravaged by illness, perhaps the album would have had a better mix to bring out its finer qualities. If Derek Sherinian hadn't been so keen to use his own distinctive keyboard style on the album, the band wouldn't have had to adjust to that whilst simultaneously angling for a more commercial direction and compensating for James' limited vocal range. In short, if just one of those hurdles hadn't been there, the band might have had the wiggle room to get over the other two, but as it is the three factors in question ended up sabotaging the album.

That said, it is possible to be a bit too harsh (as I have been with this and other Dream Theater albums in the past). There's points where this album's comparatively simplified direction actually clicks; take, for instance, Peruvian Skies, none of whose sections by themselves are necessarily all that technically demanding - jump into any one patch of the song at random and you might think it's generic metal or a generic alt-rock ballad, especially if it's one of the parts where Sherinian is holding back a little - but it does take the listener on a multi-part emotional journey which is rather effective in its own way (and perhaps helped lay the groundwork for the conceptual outing of Metropolis Pt 2.: Scenes From a Memory).

Nonetheless, if you specifically look to Dream Theater for your flashy, technically proficient prog metal fix, you're going to find material like Hollow Years underwhelming - it's not a bad song, but it's definitely a laid back, mellow, melancholic melodic rock ballad, not anything you'd call proggy. It's grown on me somewhat - as has the entire album - but you can absolutely forgive people for listening to it and thinking "OK, Dream Theater have sold out now".

At the end of the day, Falling Into Infinity is an alright album - even at points quite a good album. But for many, it won't be a good Dream Theater album, because it doesn't really include many of the qualities people look for in Dream Theater's music, bar for the odd glimmering here and there on tracks like Hell's Kitchen/Line In the Sand. If they'd been able to hit on one particular style to concentrate on across the whole album, it might be in a better place than it is, but as it stands it carries just enough reminders of the classic Dream Theater sound to underscore the fact that for a good chunk of the album, you're not getting that.

I'd previously rated this album lower, but I was being unfair. It's not terrible. But it's enough of a misfire compared to their first three stellar albums (plus the Change of Seasons EP) that it feels worse than it is. Basically, at this point people had high expectations of Dream Theater, who'd very consistently hit them, so when you get an album when they hit those expectations about half the time it feels like a bigger step down than it actually is.