Author: Sebastijan Videc
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Venue: Hala Tivoli, Ljubljana
Concert date: February 4, 2014
Attendance: 3,000
Ticket price: 33.00€
A musical institution like Dream Theater needs no special introduction. Next year the guys will celebrate a round and already venerable thirtieth anniversary. Despite a huge repertoire spread over twelve studio albums, their second album, Images and Words, is still the fan favorite, yet sadly we didn’t hear a single song from it last Tuesday. But more on that later.
My first encounter with Dream Theater, or rather just a sliver of them, back in 1998 still echoes in my head. With no special promotion, John Petrucci packed Ljubljana’s Festivalna dvorana to the last corner with his guitar clinic. And I’m sure his statement is etched in the memory of everyone who was there: »I can’t believe so many of you showed up. Imagine if the whole band were playing. I promise we’ll visit you on the next tour!« And since a promise is a debt, the Americans really did show up the following year and played an unforgettable gig in a jam-packed Križanke as part of the Metropolis Pt.2 tour. Dream Theater have come through here a few more times since, most recently in 2009 on the World Progressive tour, presenting their then-current album Silver Clouds & Black Linings. Nobody realized at the time that it was one of the band’s last shows with Mike Portnoy behind the drums. The charismatic drummer split with the band in 2010, after his bandmates wouldn’t »approve« a one-year break. Virtuoso Mike Mangini stepped into his shoes, and he had the tough job of winning over the Slovenian crowd.
Despite the freezing rain that gripped all of Slovenia, a big multinational crowd of people thirsty for quality music gathered in front of Hala Tivoli, and among the faces you could spot a few familiar names from the Slovenian rock scene. Sadly, as so many times before, the security setup was a mess. One entrance for the floor and one for the stands, each with one guard for pat-downs and one for ticket checks, predictably led to long lines, and the increasingly heavy freezing rain only made things worse. To get people into the hall faster, one of the organizers had to jump in with an extra scanner. Setting up the stage against the stands gave a great view of the stage from up there, but it also meant a relatively small floor, which filled up in no time.
A huge curtain in front of the stage promised an audiovisual assault on all our senses, and the guessing about what awaited us that night ended at 8:30 p.m., when the lights in the hall went out. The instrumental intro to False Awakening Suite from the latest album boomed out of the speakers, and on the curtain, in a brilliant bit of animation, the cover art of all their albums spun by, starting with ‘When Day and Dreams Unite’ and ending with the current self-titled ‘Dream Theater’. When the curtain dropped, the band hit us with the first single from the new record, The Enemy Inside, proving we were in for an energetic night. When LaBrie joined the instrumental part on stage, he proved to all the doubting Thomases that vocally he’s nowhere near ready for retirement.
Since the band split the show into two acts (remember the concept album Metropolis Pt.2), it was no surprise that the first part belonged mostly to newer material, mainly from the last two records, like the Grammy-nominated On the Back of Angels, the current The Looking Glass, and the song that gave the tour its name, Along for the Ride. Especially worth mentioning in this part was the epic, nearly 15-minute classic from Falling into Infinity, A Trial of Tears. It’s a complex piece full of slow and fast sections and constantly shifting rhythms, so it’s certainly not an easy pick to play live, but the band clearly didn’t break a sweat. Whether Mangini measures up to Portnoy in Dream Theater could be judged in the current instrumental Enigma Machine, which had a drum solo spot added. Personally, the solo didn’t convince me, despite this virtuoso’s master status. Especially because I’d watched a few of his solos online before the show, and the one in Ljubljana was only a pale shadow of what Mangini is capable of. Don’t get me wrong, Mangini is a top-notch drummer, and playing Portnoy’s parts evidently isn’t a big problem for him. Still, I felt something was missing, be it just charisma, or even soul.
Either way, the show was a real treat for the ears as well as the eyes, since the whole performance was backed by a rich visual spectacle on the big screen behind the stage, from fractals and brilliantly placed cameras over the drums and keyboards, through linking animations of a yellow taxi called Majesty (the band’s original name back in 1985), to the comical adventures of animated caricatures of the band during Enigma Machine. All of this, combined with a rich light show and surprisingly good sound for Hala Tivoli, justified every cent spent on this concert.
After an hour and fifteen minutes, the band took a fifteen-minute break. The end of an act calls for a pause, they say, but this one was only partial, since the spotlights stayed dimmed and various clips, mostly comical, kept rolling on stage. From ads for action figures of the band members and phenomenal guys and girls tackling DT songs, to the infamous Triangle Man, who’d like to become a member of the band.
The year 2014 brings the band the twentieth anniversary of the album Awake. Although it wasn’t received with as much enthusiasm as the previous Images and Words, it’s still a varied progressive work that’s responsible for quite a few classics. In honor of the anniversary, the band decided to play the second half of the album in the continuation of the show. After the end of the on-screen interlude, they struck up The Mirror, probably the heaviest song in their repertoire, and the fairly static crowd went wild, as expected. The hard, heavy guitar riffs are made for headbanging despite the shifting rhythm, but that didn’t bother the Dream Theater crowd. The fact that the band chose to play half an album from two decades ago also guarantees that we got to hear some rare songs that may never have been played live before, which is surely a plus for music connoisseurs, which fans of this band certainly are. If The Mirror, Lie and Scarred properly shook up the hall, the excellent ballads Lifting Shadows of a Dream and the truly exceptional Space-Dye Vest sent it into a dreamy sway. The latter gave plenty of people goosebumps, and the crowd’s reaction was simply fantastic. The band closed this so-called second act with the epic, 22-minute Illumination Theory, which at times sounds like you’re listening to a film score instead of Dream Theater.
With that song the guys left the Ljubljana stage, but of course not for long, since loud chants of ‘We want more!’ quickly summoned them back. As this year also marks the fifteenth anniversary of the album Metropolis Pt.2, the finale treated us to four more songs from that very album. As usual, they said goodbye to Ljubljana to thunderous applause and standing ovations, proving once again that they keep managing to meet the high expectations of probably one of the most demanding audiences in rock music. The progressive giants carry on no matter what, and we’re left with one more fine memory and the wait for the next tour.
Setlist
Act I
1. False Awakening Suite (intro)
2. The Enemy Inside
3. The Shattered Fortress
4. On the Backs of Angels
5. The Looking Glass
6. Trial of Tears
7. Enigma Machine (with drum solo)
8. Along for the Ride
9. Breaking All Illusions
Act II
10. The Mirror
11. Lie
12. Lifting Shadows Off a Dream
13. Scarred
14. Space-Dye Vest
15. Illumination Theory
—encore—
16. Overture 1928
17. Strange Déjà Vu
18. The Dance of Eternity
19. Finally Free
20. Illumination Theory (outro)
Photo gallery
