IMAGES AND WORDS

Another milestone album, both for Metal and Progressive music. This album is quite possibly the most important album in the history of Progressive Metal - kind of a game changer, genre-defining album. For me, this is a personal milestone as I feel I began to truly understand what Progressive music was all about through this album. I had already started getting into Dream Theater, and had a couple of their other albums when I started listening to this one. I remember HATING Metropolis Pt. 1 - absolutely loathed it. I don't remember why, but I did. But a funny thing happened - part of the instrumental section got lodged within my brain and I could not shake it loose. It would repeat over and over again. So I decided to listen to the song again. I loathed it a little less, and this time I thought "hmm, there's something interesting going on there, but I don't know what." I had to listen to this song again now, and did so a few more times and then I had an epiphany. I began to understand how the band was switching time signatures (compound time), and though I didn't understand fully, thought they might even be layering different time signatures on top of each other. This is when I began to truly appreciate and understand what Progressive music was about, and also probably the point at which Dream Theater became my favorite band.