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Dream Theater - Images And Words - Live In Tokyo CD (album) cover

IMAGES AND WORDS - LIVE IN TOKYO

Dream Theater

Progressive Metal

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jampa17
PROG REVIEWER
5 stars Old Dream Theater. Great home video experience.

This is for some nostalgic people, the essential presentation and the best era for Dream Theater. I disagree. I feel they have improved a lot through the years and the only missing (and important) element about those years is Kevin Moore, but now the band sound a lot better and Labrie actually sings and not yelled as back in those days. Now, this is a production in the route of those old home video programs that are made to entertain people, originally published as a VHS, so it's all mixed without chapters, you know, we see live footage and then videos and then interview and then more live material, more interviews, another videos and so on. So, let's see.

For that time, they only have two albums so the presentation was a lot brief than the more recent one. They played very good and it's interesting to see the energy on the stage about these guys, John Myung being very active and having a lot of eye contact with the audience and even with clothes with color (!). In the other hand, watching Kevin Moore playing live is very interesting, because is something nobody has seen in about 15 years now, he was quite a character, very intense and with style. The live footage is OK, not the best but is good enough to enjoy.

The music videos are cool and worth to see. The interviews are very fun and you can see the good vibe around the band during those days. The DVD includes an audio commentary recorded in 2003, which is fun of all the jokes the band spend, it's interesting and very fun. If you are a fan, you have to check it out.

For me, the presentation worth for the live interpretations of Surrounded, Wait for Sleep, Take the Time and Under a Glass Moon. This one was the first live material published about DT, and worth the watch. 5 stars. It's really a legendary live material.

Report this review (#278317)
Posted Saturday, April 17, 2010 | Review Permalink
Dellinger
2 stars There is a thing about Dream Theater concert DVD's that really bother me, and this one seems to be the one where it all started: mixing the concert with interviews and videos of them fooling around and promotional videos of their songs. That really distracts from the attention of the concert experience and won't allow me to enjoy it. Sure, those extra features would be great if added as bonus material. Or at least as Pink Floyd did with Live at Pompeii, they may have added an extra feature including only the live concert as an uninterrupted whole.

Some other problems won't let me enjoy this DVD as much as I would like. To begin with, they chose almost none of the songs that I like from the already released albums up to that point. Only Wait for Sleep, which is too short to rescue this video; Pull me Under, which is much more enjoyable on the original album (there are some really horrible patented LaBrie screaming added to this version); and Ytse Jam, which has some added extra-long drum solo that makes it really hard to fully enjoy it. From the videos, once again the only I really like is Pull me Under, but this is an edited version, and I really miss the deleted minutes. The rest of the songs are OK, but nothing too memorable for me, and some awful LaBrie screams keep on ruining them.

Sure enough there are some interesting points on this video, mainly to see Dream Theater play, whatever songs they are playing, is very entertaining, and being such an early DT performance is also cool, specially because it includes Kevin Moore in the Line-Up.

I would give this video 3 stars if it were only for the concert (even though they didn't play most of my favorite songs, none are so bad as to not making it enjoyable), however, I take one more star because of the interviews and promotional song videos mixed with the concert.

Report this review (#383854)
Posted Thursday, January 20, 2011 | Review Permalink

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