An Evening with Dream Theater at Ljubljana’s Hala Tivoli, Endless Volleys of Notes on the Staff

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Location: Ljubljana (Slovenia), Hala Tivoli
Concert date: 18.10.2005
Attendance: 5500
Ticket price: 6.990,00SIT

Finally! Dream Theater yet again, sure, but still. Where else do you find anything progressive in Slovenia? From Yes and King Crimson to Marillion, Arena, IQ and, first and foremost, the riff-driven prog of the likes of Symphony X, Vanden Plas, Angra,…. But come on, what ever makes it to Slovenia…. The leg of the tour where the Dreams stopped in Ljubljana was called “An Evenihng With Dream Theater”, and the setlist was seriously bold compared to the summer (June) one we got to taste in Padua, which focused on the band’s last two studio albums. This time the set covered every era of the band, kicking off with Octavarium, the freshest studio release, with The Root Of All Evil and Panic Attack. The hall was nicely filled. A good crowd of a solid 3000 and it just kept growing and growing. A smart trick was moving the stage closer to the middle, so the contact between the audience and the band was instantly tight and intense. Hands up and full throttle from the get-go! But oh dear, oh dear. You veterans already know what’s coming. The sound, of course! Back in total sh…! I stood on the right-hand stand, as befits a well-off gentleman. On top of my eyes nearly going cross-eyed from watching the stage at an angle (from the side), what I mostly heard was the drums punching through, the vocals nowhere to be found, and the guitar riffing smeared the whole sound picture too.

Compared to the Padua experience, the band was a lot more playful and fired up onstage. The sound never reached an acceptable level all night, but by the prehistoric Another Won, from the days when they were called Majesty, they’d at least hit a level of minimal listenability. That minus was entirely rescued by the aforementioned fired-up energy of the band, the crazy fans, and of course three screens that showed the onstage antics of Jordan Rudess, Mike Portnoy, John Petrucci and Michael Chang,… sorry, John Myung…, while the central screen occasionally cut in with themes about the very essence of the band, its spirit, mission and idea. That match between the video motifs and the chosen songs helped lift the atmosphere to an enviably high level. The first part of the show got more and more tense through outstanding classics like Under A Glass Moon and Caught In A Web. That first part, a good hour long, ended with the year 2000 and the song Losing Time/Grand Finale. In Peruvian Skies, Dream Theater slipped without a hitch into a bit of Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, only to flip it pretty quickly into Wherever I May Roam (Metallica). The fans were thrilled, delirious…

A fifteen-minute break followed, then a much angrier second half with material from “Train Of Thought” (2003), As I Am and Endless Sacrifice, which tipped over into a finish with an “Octavarium” trio. The first song in that trio was the excellent I Walk Beside You, a track with a super catchy, deliciously infectious chorus and, dare I say it, a U2-ish vein, basically made for radio airplay. And then the best of the latest record. Sacrified Sons, which flowed into….. That follow-up was Rudess’s “continuum fingerboard”, which is sort of the equivalent of a guitarist’s “steel pedal” (for those of you who flirt with guitar names like Steve Howe or David Gilmour). An outstanding atmospheric intro from Rudess that gave you goosebumps. The people in the hall went mute and just stared wide-eyed at the screen! Eventually LaBrie joined Rudess on a bar stool! He started singing the opening part of the song Octavarium in a sophisticated, wonderful way! A 24-minute composition with a red thread running through it, and a real treat to close the show. A song of many atmospheres. End of the regular set, people going nuts all over the hall and demanding more!

The band opened the encore with the half-ballad The Spirit Carries On (well, for a change they could swap that one for, say, the legendary Surrounded), and right after came total madness with probably the best-known Dream Theater tune of all time, “pull me under, I’m not afraid”. That is, Pull Me Under, which they flipped completely unexpectedly into Metropolis Pt.One! They started playing the latter exactly where its best part begins. The instrumental middle section! People were drooling over the bars of “Images And Words” (1992).

What can I say. A good three hours long set! A playful band, even the always reserved John Myung shook hands with fans and sent the audience off with quite a smile on his face, which was a truly astonishing move for an onstage ever-icy bassist. Portnoy will stay in our hearts forever! Next time he comes, we’ll take him to the first pub, get properly hammered together and teach him Zdravljica (the Slovenian anthem), and in return he can write a progressively fractured rhythm arrangement for the anthem’s melody. The guy had put on a Slovenian national hockey team jersey before the show. Who knows, maybe they sent some agent from the hockey federation (HZS) to the Dream Theater show to scout for potential talent among rock drummers. Anyway, what else can I say? Finally something for the gourmets and music perfectionists. Sadly we were once again cheated out of the sound. I don’t know how it was down on the floor, but up in the stands it was dismal to listen to. Anyway, whichever way I turn it, sound aside, it was “entertainment” and a half!

Setlist

In the Name of God outro (intro tape)
1. The Root of All Evil
2. Panic Attack
3. Another Won
4. A Fortune in Lies
5. Under a Glass Moon
6. Caught In a Web
7. Peruvian Skies
8. Fatal Tragedy
9. About To Crash (Reprise)
10. Losing Time/Grand Finale
—intermission—
11. As I Am
12. Endless Sacrifice
13. I Walk Beside You
14. Sacrificed Sons
15. Octavarium
—encore—
16. The Spirit Carries On
17. Pull Me Under/
18. Metropolis pt 1.