Venue: Mala dvorana Doma sportova / Zagreb / Croatia
Concert date: 06.06.2007
Attendance: 3
Ticket price: 220.00HRK
Dream Theater are not a thing you can possibly skip when they land on a European tour! In June 2007 the guys booked a bunch of festival slots, then tacked on a few standalone shows, and suddenly the whole thing looked like a proper tour. Dream Theater came to Zagreb to have a ball, like Santa Claus come to town. With the new album “Systematic Chaos”, still sizzling hot and fresh out of the pan, officially released in the very same week as this Croatian date.
This time around Dream Theater picked something truly exotic for the support slot. They invited Charlie Dominici, the Sleeping Beauty of prog, back from the dead. This dude is the original singer of Dream Theater, from the band’s debut “When Dream And Day Unite” (1989). Today Charlie Dominici has his own band, called, what else, Dominici. The very same Charlie confirmed his return to the living, after the debut O3: A Trilogy – Part One (2005), this year with a new studio album, which is of course, as you’d expect, called O3: A Trilogy – Part Two (2007).
But first let’s rewind a bit, to the afternoon of that same Wednesday, to be exact. The hot-blooded fanatics roll up to the Croatian border on the “Concert Freak” bus. At Bregana, the merciless hawk eye of the authorities picks three poor souls out of the bus, having discovered that their ID cards had expired. The upshot was, of course, that we had to take two of these gentlemen back to Slovenia, and then, on the second visit, show the very same sage (read: wise man, or man in blue) all the splendors and vast expanses of the bus’s toilet, because in there we were smuggling 20 slant-eyed guys from the Far East who wanted to see the Dream Theater show and say hi to their relative John Myung! After reaching the orgasm of all orgasms, the lionhearted guardian of law and order let us cross the border and continue toward the Croatian capital. The epilogue? Apparently from now on we’ll only go to Croatia by car. Zagreb is simply too close to waste hours and hours waiting for absolutely nothing.
We reached Zagreb a little before seven. Just right, because the doors opened at 7 PM. Cozy atmosphere. A floor 20 meters long, right behind it the mixing desk area, and behind that stands that could cram in another 2,000 people or so.
Dominici surprised everybody. Even the lighting guys, since they walked onstage with the lights already on. I’d never seen that before. They kicked off at 7:45 PM. Of course all eyes were on Charlie. He showed up onstage after his minions had already “fried up” a few minutes of intro. The guy has a rather goofy boxer-wrestler look, which he is of course convinced is aesthetically unbeatable, and you couldn’t pin it on anyone else, but it’s his. It clashed hilariously with his high, squeaky melodic voice. For those of you who know the booklet of “When Dream And Day Unite” (1989): in the new millennium Charlie is a short-haired, neatly shaven man with a tanned complexion, a hint of glam brilliantine and eye-wateringly shiny earrings. Charlie’s sidekicks are highly schooled guys. Dominici are a quintet: keys, bass, drums, guitar and, of course, Charlie on vocals. And the repertoire showed this is a demonstration of progressive metal that has far more in common with that label than Dream Theater do these days. Really, Dominici showed what walked out the door with him when he left Dream Theater. Dream Theater got more and more fragmented from record to record, and today it’s hard to remember two different melodies from the post-“Images And Words” albums. Dominici, on the other hand, write music with much more compact content. The riffs are fundamental, the solos confined to the intro, outro and middle instrumental parts. Among other things, the guys sawed through two instrumentals. They had a wide repertoire to pick from, since a whole 45 minutes were available. The sound was dreadful, and in the mush of surging low end you couldn’t really make out the keys or the guitar chopping. Dominici’s contact with the crowd was also more than odd. The guy just raised his arms theatrically and tried to squeeze some energy out of people with similar gestures. Practically no talking. The pretty boys showed they belong to typical American progressive metal, with a pinch of an obscure vibe, which is mostly down to Charlie’s vocals, which would fit right in with, say, old-school speed metal, and which uncannily recalled the atmosphere of the Dream Theater debut. So, to draw the line: Dominici are the personification of everything Dream Theater don’t have today but did have on their first record. Unbelievable. The man holds up well vocally. Too bad the band’s sound was utterly awful and I often simply couldn’t make out what the vocals were trying to say. After the show I could only tell myself: “Nice to see you, Charlie, because you sang on the first Dream Theater record and that makes you a somewhat interesting clown.” And judging by what we saw, I wasn’t the only one who breathed a big sigh of relief that the 45 minutes flew by quickly.
Dream Theater have an extremely well-oiled roadie crew. They set up the stage in a measly 20 minutes, and the progressive heavyweights could start the show already at 8:55 PM. The pre-recorded intro mix, stitched together from the most famous Dream Theater motifs, entertained us until 9 PM. Then the crowd went completely nuts. While Dominici were playing the hall filled up by another half, and before Dream Theater hit the stage it was packed to the rafters. Dream Theater smartly “spruced up” their show with a completely changed set list. This time they again gave more attention to the album “Metropolis Pt. 2:Scenes From A Memory” (1999) and right from the start fired up the already well “overdosed” Croatian heads with Overture 1928! They stayed there with Strange Deja Vu. Petrucci’s hair has grown out nicely compared to how he looked in Ljubljana in October 2005, so he looked like Petrucci from “Images And Words” fifteen years younger. Rudess has grayed his beard, and with just a little pointy hat missing he could pass for a model replacement garden gnome. LaBrie now sports a mustache and a nicely shaped goatee, reviving the glory days of swashbucklers led by D’Artagnan, while the Taliban-looking Mike Portnoy and bassist John Myung kept the most of their old look. At the start of the show LaBrie was drowned out, but by Take The Time (read that right!!!) they had “cranked him up”. The man sang the show at a high level. No major flubs, and we caught him on a workday of great vocal form. Of course Petrucci was once again positioned a bit off to the side. He obviously likes keeping to himself onstage during shows. He didn’t take many steps toward center stage all night. He played in a trance again, scattering notes like an Asian typhoon scatters raindrops. His riffing was heavily undermined by the sound of the keyboards throughout the show, since they were often too quiet, or muddy in the mix. Funny that such perfectionists can still allow themselves mistakes like that.
The band surprised us by showing up with the most basic stage setup, thank god they weren’t completely naked. In Ljubljana in 2005 we got huge screens, the repertoire was twice as long, the set list five times better and of course there were twice as many people. So this was one of the less interesting Dream Theater shows. Also funny: the band apparently didn’t think it important to set up an official merchandise stand, but then again… Is there anyone left among you who doesn’t own a Dream Theater shirt?
Anyway, back to the stage. Take The Time, a song that by itself paid off the ticket for me, didn’t really mean any special miracle on the set list. Four days earlier Dream Theater had played the whole “Images And Words” album live at the Gods Of Metal festival in Milan. This time, of course, it was utopian to expect that. Take The Time even carried one blunder. The guys leaned on samples of the pre-recorded intro. Given how all-powerfully they dominate their instruments, they could have bothered to play it themselves. Anyway, after Take The Time, which, intro aside, was “rattled off” supernaturally seductively, giving you goosebumps and making your pants shake, LaBrie took a few moments to catch his breath and explained to the masses that the band had just put out a new album and planned to play brand-new songs from it. Of course the floor went wild, no matter what Dream Theater decided to play. The density of rabid fans was highest down there on the floor, and they knew every single word LaBrie sang in the verses. The first new song was Constant Motion, which nastily pulls toward Metallica, classic Metallica of course, but with a Dream Theater chorus. A hot metal wave sweeps over the hall! As if the Metallica resemblance doesn’t want to end, here comes The Dark Eternal Night with an even more typical thrashing main riff. The white-hot first half of the regular set was closed by Endless Sacrifice (“Train Of Thought“, 2003), after which the guys gave some attention to the album “Octavarium” (2005) and, with the easygoing, radio-friendly I Walk Beside You, cooled the game down and brought more melody back onstage. You’d have wanted a classic or two from “Awaken”, but the band kept indulging its sympathy for newer songs. So we also got Panic Attack (“Octavarium”, 2005), newcomer Forsaken (“Systematic Chaos”, 2007), whose riff owes plenty to Iron Maiden without any hesitation, and As I Am (“Train Of Thought”, 2003). A particularly easy day at the office for Dream Theater. And to close, the thing without which it simply doesn’t work! Pull Me Under, the hall on its feet, and the guys say goodbye.
With the sweet-sounding The Spirit Carries On they’re back after five minutes, and then comes the peak of every Dream Theater show – the superb, one-of-a-kind and, for Dream Theater in their current state of mind, unrepeatable Metropolis – part I, a real little bible and primer of progressive metal that characterizes the genre in the best possible way. Magic. This track really works miracles, and always does! People were literally in a trance. Hands all in the air. At every cue from the musicians onstage the crowd roared back and dutifully followed orders. The sea of hands beneath me, sitting up in the stands, is a picture I can easily still conjure up before my eyes today. The guys had Home included as an encore, but they didn’t go for it. One way or another the show ran a total of an hour and three quarters, which is a perfectly satisfactory length given the requirements. The peak of the show was the definitive closer with Metropolis – part I.
A huge amount has been said about Dream Theater. They’re simply grandmasters. They’re circus performers without compare, and whoever misses such a circus in their hometown or nearby is a great sinner. Even if you don’t know the band. A Dream Theater show is simply the kind of spectacle where you open your mouth wide and leave your eyes on the stage. You devour it with relish, even if you came unprepared, at first uninterested, but all it takes is being in the right place at the right time. You’ll always be richly rewarded. With Dream Theater, no worries. The only moment that reminded us we were deep in the Balkans came when the band was already saying goodbye. Just as they were leaving the stage, three 0.4 l plastic cups full of beer came flying in quick succession from 20 m away, in big, perfectly formed parabolas. Their crazy owners had great aim, since they flew straight toward the musicians.
This time the band did simplify its work quite a bit, and above all did a lot of “riiiiiiiiffing”. Funny that there were no special solo spots on the set list. This show is of course a forerunner, since the autumn European tour is expected to offer more. First of all, let’s hope for a somewhat more colorful set list featuring mostly older songs, especially from the first three albums, a chunk of A Change Of Seasons wouldn’t hurt either, and of course a longer running time, by at least 15 minutes. The guys remain in excellent “shooting form”. Infallible executioners, big jokers, with the overgrown Mike standing out again with his clowning, putting on the jersey of the Croatian national football team before The Spirit Carries On, and the reactions to that need no description. In short, Dream Theater remain very big and still relevant. The crowd confirmed that too, made up mostly of people whose ages gravitate toward the number 20.
Setlist
1. Overture 1928
2. Strange Deja Vu
3. Take The Time
4. Constant Motion
5. The Dark Eternal Night
6. Endless Sacrifice
7. I Walk Beside You
8. Panic Attack
9. Forsaken
10. As I Am
11. Pull Me Under
—encore—
12. The Spirit Carries On
13. Metropolis – pt. I
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