Author: Rok Klemše
Venue: Palassport, Padua, Italy
Concert date: 29.10.2007
Attendance: 5000
After a whole string of gigs in October, the peak for me came right at the end of the month with the Dream Theater and Symphony X show in Padua. Good old Tadej and his Koncerti.net sorted the transport again, and off we went toward Padua. The trip could have been smooth and quick, but sadly it wasn’t all peaceful. The weak bladders of metalheads naturally meant unplanned stops, before Venice we hit a traffic jam that dragged on all the way to Padua, and on top of everything we came a hair’s breadth from tragedy. A completely wasted (and probably on something else too) metalhead girl, who had been getting on the bus’s nerves, was giving the driver gray hairs just a few meters from the venue, where we’d got stuck in the jam, by nagging him for a toilet until he finally let her out to pee in the middle of the road. And of course the young lady ends up crawling under a 300-ton semi truck that was just about to pull away. It’s only thanks to the sober, quick thinking of the driver, the tour guide, and a few passengers that she’s still alive! It’s because of idiocy like this that we metalheads have, and sadly always will have, a bad reputation. Thank God a great concert was waiting for us.
Even though I’d already seen Symphony X twice this year, I waited for my third visit to their show with the same impatience as the first time. A chat with an equally fanatical fan and a few chosen tracks on the way to Padua are enough to get you there, and when the lights go out and the megalomaniacal intro Oculus ex Inferni booms out of the speakers, the brakes come off. I’m really glad I caught Symphony X a good ten days ago at their solo headline show in Vienna, where they had a good hour and a half and so played the fantastic EP The Odyssey too. This time, as the support for Dream Theater, they only had 40 minutes. But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, as our forefathers used to say, right? So the guys from New Jersey rushed express-style through the lost paradise with Set the World on Fire (The Lie of Lies), Domination, The Serpent’s Kiss and Paradise Lost. These tracks have made the setlist every single time since Paradise Lost came out, and they sound so supernaturally good live that I howl like an animal at their choruses every time. Ahem… The American five-piece always give it everything live, with the excellent Russel Allen up front as ever, whose incredible vocals sing circles around plenty of other singers. Allen is phenomenal both in the midrange and in the aggressive, almost thrash-style vocals, as well as in the falsetto heights where the mic can be a full meter away and he still pierces your eardrums. Instrumentally Symphony X are total perfectionists, and all eyes are of course on Michael Romeo, one of the best metal guitarists around, who covers the space of three guitarists with a single guitar live! Then there’s the excellent keyboardist Mike Pinella and a killer rhythm section led by the fun-loving musketeer Mike Lepond. You can’t expect anything from Symphony X live but the highest possible quality, though their incompetent sound “engineer” deserves a big slap on the wrist: he twisted the knobs on the mixing desk however he felt like, then spent half the Symphony X set staring like a calf at a new gate. Luckily the Dream Theater sound guy came to the rescue and got the sound to at least a decent level, with somewhat quieter bass and louder guitar and vocals.
Symphony X setlist:
1. Set the World on Fire (The Lie of Lies)
2. Domination
3. The Serpent’s Kiss
4. Paradise Lost
5. Inferno (Unleash the Fire)
6. Sea of Lies
7. Of Sins and Shadows
After a twenty-minute break, it was on. The hall went dark and the screen above the stage ran through the covers of all the DT albums and clips from different eras, accompanied by short musical snippets from individual tracks. Then the hall exploded in ecstasy as the legendary American five-piece marched onstage and, fittingly for their two-hour set, kicked off with Strauss’s iconic Also Sprach Zaratustra, which we all remember best from Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. No sweet talk, the guys fired up the engine without stopping and shifted straight into fifth gear right from the start with the show-wrecker, the almost thrash-like Constant Motion from the American quintet’s latest release, Systematic Chaos. Dream Theater have been roaming around the old continent for a good month now, and it really shows on stage. This was my third Dream Theater show, and I’d never seen the guys this tight, though their instrumental virtuosity is proverbial anyway. A quick greeting from singer James LaBrie to the Italian crowd, which packed the hall to the last corner, some 5000 heads crammed into the Palassport, and we were already getting a déjà vu feeling with the excellent Strange Déjà vu from the conceptual masterpiece Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory. The Dreamers decided to totally freshen up the setlist, most of which naturally went to presenting the excellent new record, while the rest they filled, to our big (and pleasant) surprise, with rarely heard, almost obscure tracks. In that vein came the ten-minute Blind Faith from Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. This and similar tracks got a cooler reception from the otherwise pretty hot-blooded Italian crowd, but it was a real treat to hear stuff we don’t get very often because of some already slightly overchewed Pull Me Under. The Dark Eternal Night was one of the highlights of the show for me, since it’s one of the better tracks on the new record, with Petrucci’s lyrics about a monster being a pretty atypical subject for the Dreamers. And the real surprise was the animation on the screen that accompanied the song, in which Dream Theater transform into the dream team of superheroes N.A.D.S. (North American Dream Squad). Jordan The Wizard as a Gandalf-style wizard with fingers sharp as scissors, Petrucci with a flaming guitar, James and Myung with supersonic attacks, and Portnoy with his death spit, of course defeat the monster in the end and celebrate a sweet victory. A nice, fun extra that makes the Dreamers even more approachable and shows them in a more playful light. You could see the guys were enjoying themselves on stage like they haven’t in ages, Portnoy let off steam with the punching bags he’d set up right on the drum riser, teased Petrucci during his solos with masturbation gestures, and Rudess was joined at the keyboards by the symbol of the new record, an ant. These built themselves an anthill right on the stage. Then another surprise, a gorgeous ballad from the classic Images & Words, Another Day. LaBrie truly shone that night, he hasn’t sung this well in a long time, and he climbed into the highest falsetto heights with no trouble, which usually gave him the most problems. Then Scarred from Awake and Forsaken from the new album, whose intro Petrucci botched twice. Noooo, Petrucci’s not a god! Then I Walk Beside You from Octavarium, followed by an epic, almost half-hour journey through both parts of In the Presence of Enemies, which, like all the other new tracks, sounds phenomenal live. And the main set was over. But the Dreamers of course gave us an encore in the form of a fifteen-minute medley with an interesting choice of tracks, they even pulled Trial of Tears from Falling Into Infinity out of the mothballs, mixed it with Finally Free, Learning to Live, In the Name of God and Octavarium, and said goodbye to us after two full hours.
Dream Theater setlist:
1. Intro
2. Constant Motion
3. Strange Déjà vu
4. Blind Faith
5. The Dark Eternal Night
6. Another Day
7. Scarred
8. Forsaken
9. I Walk Beside You
10. In the Presence of Enemies Part I & II
—.—.—.—
11. Medley: Trial of Tears/Finally Free/Learning to Live/In the Name of God/Octavarium
Personally, this was the best Dream Theater show I’ve ever seen. The guys are at their peak, reinvigorated with fresh energy, and as hard as it is to believe, they’ve never looked this good on stage. I bow to the sound guy, who got the sound to the highest quality level, which is no easy job in a not exactly acoustic basketball arena. The Italian organization, though, once again deserves a big slap on the wrist. Totally ignorant treatment of journalists, outrageously expensive beer, poor security, not to mention that the Italians still haven’t learned a single word of English. Ah, the things we have to put up with to see our heroes. But with a concert this good, everything else fades away. Until next time!
Photos: Jani Lah
Words: Rok Klemše
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