Label: Roadrunner Records
Release date: 06/23/2009
Production: Mike Portnoy & John Petrucci
Album length: 75.22 min
Genre: Progressive Metal
When you spin a new Dream Theater record in your CD player these days, only two questions run through your head. The first goes like this: “Will I find anything listenable?” and the second: “After “Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence”, can they even do anything different anymore?”
Sadly, both questions are born of the skepticism that has become the standard companion to every new Dream Theater release. Let’s get one thing out of the way first: Dream Theater are still, and always have been, a first-rate live attraction, and every penny spent on their DVDs and CDs documenting their live shows is money well spent. But a band only really gets its due through its studio work. On stage anything goes, in the studio it doesn’t. You have to distill the essence of yourself and show off what’s uniquely yours creatively. And that’s not always an easy job.
“Scenes From A Memory: Metropolis pt II” (1999) was and remains the band’s swan song. “Octavarium” (2005) showed a few signs of a pleasant surprise. “Systematic Chaos” was another creative slump, and “Black Clouds And Silver Linings”? Basically more lukewarm soup, miles away from the days of inspiration, and proof of the band’s creative exhaustion. These days they’re only busy with what else they can play, how fast, and in how many ways. From Iron Maiden and Metallica records to Pink Floyd and Genesis. Incorrigibly soulless showing off of schoolbook knowledge, fueled by steroid-pumped speed-solo repasses meant to hide a big problem.
Dream Theater, you see, were never famous for being a tight unit. And I don’t mean that in terms of a stable lineup. They’ve always been famous as individuals. From that angle it’s easy to get the impression that this is really an artificially assembled band, which of course it isn’t. Five ego trips with little ear for one another. That’s why the songs are long and sprawling. Often too long, with too many motifs, and above all with far too much soloing. In the end all these songs come out sounding the same, even though they’re different. Maybe because of those weak cohesive bonds between the band members, Dream Theater aren’t capable of squeezing out greater compactness, melodic-thematic resolution and creative clarity.
At almost 15 minutes, A Nightmare to Remember is a promising, highly atmospheric piece in its first part, one that actually fills you with plenty of hope given the usual high expectations and demands a listener brings to a new Dream Theater release. The atmosphere the band creates with an exceptional wall of sound of riffs and keyboards, backed by the standard double-bass-drum pedals of Portnoy’s locomotive, is almost provocatively black metal. Then LaBrie joins in with vocals. The song is typical Dream Theater. Fragmented in its motifs, but up to the 7:30 mark everything is boldly and pleasantly woven together. A dynamic drift through many moods. All good. Then comes the unlucky 36th second of the eighth minute, and Petrucci and Rudess, in their breakneck solo self-gratification, wreck everything the guys built up until then. Haven’t we heard this more than enough times already? Downright obnoxious soloing that grinds through your brain like a coffee grinder, incompatible, unfelt. Two minutes of torment are finally followed by a melodic way out again, then a compact riff and even a brutal growl, which is more pleasing in the closing section than any solo. So the first track could have been two minutes shorter, and Dream Theater’s “hair-splitting” would have kept its point.
A Rite To Passage is something Dream Theater have been serving up since “Train of Thought” (2003). A raw riff with an oriental twist and a melodically well-chiseled chorus. Of course, the second half is once again riddled with “solo-isms,” and the feeling at the end is the same as after the opening track. Whiter is the shortest song, ready to be released as a single, but we’ve heard all of this before with Forsaken or Through Her Eyes, not to mention the way-more-than-excellent Surrounded. The Shattered Fortress is an attempt at creating a song similar to the Metropolis classic, with a clichéd sugary intro and outro where you can sing the melody ahead of time. Once again, the band is trying to recycle its former work. Way too obvious. The Best Of Times brings a bit more of interest again. A twisty song, a flowing motif, and Petrucci manages to lay down an interesting oriental-Maiden-style intro that fits right into the “Train of Thought” energy of the song. The heaviest track on the album, with Dream Theater as dangerous (thrash!) metalheads. If we ignore Rudess’s keyboard kitsch in the chorus, this is a song with potential. When Rudess escapes into solos shortly before the seventh minute, you can only wish for one thing: “Rudess, leave Dream Theater right now!” Petrucci’s soloing in the last part of the song is totally enough, it’s even listenable! Above all, the band skillfully pulls the track out in the closing section, since the dynamics build up there with the help of the progressively broken rhythms of Portnoy’s locomotive, which hauls the song out here.
The nearly 20-minute The Count Of Tuscany keeps buying off the prog metal freaks with its length. The twelfth minute of the album is interesting, because it’s hard to miss the similarity between Petrucci’s approach and the “steel pedal” trick Steve Howe used way back in 1974 on Yes’s album “Relayer,” in the song Gates Of Delirium, just before the part called Soon. Heh, we’re back to references again. This last song is a good song in its own right, no minuses. Even listenable. And more. Compactness actually dominates fragmentation, despite the good 19 minutes the track runs. I can conclude that it’s precisely this song that rescues the album from mediocrity and lifts it above the confusion that reigned on the aptly titled “Systematic Chaos” (2007). And most importantly: Dream Theater didn’t wreck this song with solos. You could even say it’s Change Of Seasons to a certain extent, for 2009.
“Black Clouds And Silver Linings” is essentially “Systematic Chaos” with a bit more compact resolution and the established “Train of Thought” metal rattling we’ve all gotten used to by now. The new album isn’t special in any way. It isn’t even attractive, and in that respect it’s more a step down for the band than up. It’s Dream Theater from head to toe, but with too much self-recycling that the guys can’t manage to disguise, since no real breeze of creative inspiration has blown through the band in a long time. Above all, some forced solos still stand out like crazy, especially the obnoxiously high-pitched, almost pinball or Super Nintendo sound of keyboardist Jordan Rudess, which gives us another alibi to miss both Derek Sherinian and even more Kevin Moore. That also means the album could have been at least 20 minutes shorter and thereby gone down a lot better. So. A good album. Nothing outstanding. Fans of the band will have it. The rest of us remain perfectly content with the band’s output up to 1999.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 7.0 / 10
Tracklist:
1. A Nightmare to Remember (16:10)
2. A Rite of Passage (8:35)
3. Wither (5:25)
4. The Shattered Fortress (12:49)
5. The Best of Times (13:07)
6. The Count of Tuscany (19:16)
Lineup:
James LaBrie – vocals
John Petrucci – guitar
Jordan Rudess – keyboards
John Myung – bass guitar
Mike Portnoy – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Jerry Goodman – violin (track no. 5)
