Label: InsideOut Records
Production: John Petrucci
Release date: 22.02.2019
Album length: 56.57 min.
Genre: Progressive Metal
Was anyone scared of this? Well, kind of. The 14th studio album overall from the American progressive metal titans Dream Theater confirms that the band ran out of creative steam quite a while ago. “Distance Over Time” is first and foremost a very good new studio album, but one that walks the legacy of the band’s past studio work in a tried-and-tested, careful, even very concise way. It’s actually interesting that some points tie back even to the band’s early era, all the way to the album “Images And Words”. The opener Untethered Angel alone surprises with a heaviness Dream Theater haven’t brought since the days of “Train Of Thought” or “Systematic Chaos”, especially in the chorus melody, and in the outro in particular it comes close to the vibe of “Scenes From A Memory”. Dream Theater really did want to make a decidedly different album with “Distance Over Time” from its conceptual predecessor “The Astonishing”, which stretched well past the two-hour mark. Not a single track hits the ten-minute mark, and the album is, amazingly, shorter than an hour of playing time, something we haven’t seen since “Images And Words”.
All the elements and quality criteria that make Dream Theater one of the most revered and respected bands in prog metal are present on “Distance Over Time” too. The guys have simplified the arrangements a bit, and guitar riffs are grabbing the spotlight again, along with tightly crafted motifs in which it’s easy to pick out the punchiness of the verses and choruses. The wound-up Paralyzed proves it, evoking the feel of “Train Of Thought” again and boasting one of the darkest chorus melodies on the album. In the third track too, Fall Into the Light, which at seven minutes is one of the album’s longer songs, Dream Theater surprise with a compositional approach built on compact motifs that subtly twist the atmosphere, and it reminds you more of the songwriting style of classic metal outfits a la Iron Maiden than of a band bursting with pent-up finger itch, itching to bury the listener under hyper-torrential downpours of ultra-fast runs of notes. Okay, Fall Into The Light doesn’t dodge that entirely, courtesy of the irrepressible Jordan Rudess, but thankfully only in the outro and the closing stretch of the track. Barrstol Warrior surprises as a composition, because in it Dream Theater cleverly revive the songwriting style of the nineties, that is, somewhere between 1992 and 1999. The lead, or opening, riff hints at it instantly, especially once the broken rhythm joins in. Dream Theater are a surprise in that for a good chunk of the new album they very “pleasantly” fend off escapes into chaotic fraying of the compositions, which is otherwise often triggered by that familiar gush of cross-dialogue, an endless shaking-out of notes between guitar and keyboards. Barrstol Warrior too keeps up the album’s unbelievably conciliatory compactness and memorability, despite the fact that it runs almost seven minutes.
LaBrie remains standard. Distinctive, striking and instantly recognizable. He’s a special vocalist. You can like him, or his tone can just drill into your brain, but then hands off Dream Theater. As such, he once again gives the songs a special character. Room 137 (with a Beatles-style bridge insert) is a metal-sharpened song with a voluminous rhythmic groove, written by drummer Mike Mangini, which is his songwriting debut with Dream Theater. A seriously dark moment on the album, it blasts the listener back to the days of “Train Of Thought” again. Vocal lines included. Drama, in other words. S2N keeps up the heaviness of the previous Room 137, only everything is “more scattered”, with more syncopation, and also more compositional looseness and fragmentation. Nothing new for Dream Theater. But it’s nice to realize that Petrucci really is “shredding” on the guitar this time and has reawakened the true-blue metalhead within. As for At Wit’s End, the album’s longest composition, it’s an example of a song that embodies the whole essence of a band like Dream Theater in one piece, in one place. If you were looking for the lost track from “Scenes From A Memory” (1999), At Wit’s End would be a pretty close match for that search (the chorus). Out Of Reach is a likable, punchy ballad that flips the mood, and in it Dream Theater skillfully and craftily build up the atmosphere. Rudess’s calm and his focus on making effective use of the available space with the piano almost come as a surprise here. The album has to end with a bang, and one of its most vividly seasoned tracks takes care of that! That’s the closing Pale Blue Dot, in which Dream Thaeater quickly switch to venomously fast phrasing and show once again why they count as such a unique and special musical entity in the progressive metal universe. The breathtaking back-and-forth between the instrumentalists brings the album a peak for everyone who demands a stricter focus on perfect, uncompromising technical complexity from the band. Dream Theater show it off at full tilt and, of course, completely in their own style. The bombast is held in check by a musically conciliatory chorus melody, though Pale Blue Dot is otherwise the loosest composition on the album, where Rudess doesn’t beat around the bush as he once again “slips in” a few seriously irritating, shrill lines, a reminder that it’s precisely this use of keyboards of his that cost Dream Theater a considerable chunk of their fan base, who were betting on keyboard arrangements in the vein of Kevin Moore or Derek Sherinian. But this time around, Dream Theater kept Rudess nicely on a leash across the album’s compositions.
So, let me not write too long a review. “Distance Over Time” is an album Dream Theater kind of needed, after they pretty much made a movie soundtrack with “The Astonishing”. “Distance Over Time” is considerably more bristling in a metal sense and more focused in its phrasing. As such, it’s a neat imprint of Dream Theater flirting with their earlier era, including the period when they bristled up the arrangements and production (“Train Of Thought”). Interestingly, this time they don’t push at all costs into the notorious euphoria of machine-gunning runs of notes, but instead save such escapades for the right moments within the compositions. They want to remind us, in other words, that they can write and create a compact composition. And they pull it off in full, since “Distance Over Time” is once again a more listenable moment in Dream Theater’s career. No artistic progress, then. But in everything it embodies, it’s a Dream Theater album from head to toe. And of course, a very good Dream Theater album. But no more than that.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 8.5 / 10
Tracklist:
1. Untethered Angel
2. Paralyzed
3. Fall into the Light
4. Barstool Warrior
5. Room 137
6. S2N
7. At Wit’s End
8. Out of Reach
9. Pale Blue Dot
Lineup:
James LaBrie – vocals
John Petrucci – guitar
Jordan Rudess – keyboards
John Myung – bass guitar
Mike Mangini – drums
