IMAGES AND WORDS

Definitely Dream Theater's finest hour and one of the overall best releases featured in the prog-metal genre, and it's a clear improment over their debut album too with overall stronger songwriting and clearer much more balanced production. New vocalist James LaBrie makes his first appearence here and gives the band a new and better voice to their music (their first one was too uneven, IMO). Musically, the mix of melodic prog and metal goes very well here and the band knows when and where to calm down in time. The longer tracks here are the best ones and "Metropolis" and "Learning to Live" are some of the best songs Dream Theater ever put out on an album, but the shorter and mellower tracks are very good as well, notably "Wait for Sleep". Fantastic instrumentation by the band as well and the album rarely, if ever, lacks focus, and the only "weak" spot on this album is "Another Day" which remains a good song.

A brilliantly balanced and solid album overall with some of the best material from the band ever. It stands as one of their two best releases to me (the other one being "Awake") and is essential if you like prog-metal.