Location: Padua (Italy), Villa Pisani
Concert date: 22.06.2005
Attendance: 0
Ticket price: €32.00
Well, almost five years had passed since Dream Theater played Ljubljana’s Križanke, and after five years my ears clearly itched to hear the prog champions “live” again. Once more we had a ton of trouble finding the right location, because we first drove out to the village of Stanghella, south of Padua in the direction of Bologna, where there’s also a palace called Villa Pisani, just like the “real” one in Stra near Padua (worth remembering). The guy selling fruit in front of the barred gates of the “wrong” palace knew exactly what time it was the moment his eyes landed on us. He fired off the town of Stra like a cannon shot and told us to turn back toward Venice. Of course, we missed the excellent Italian power metallers Labirynth, the first support act, completely. The real Villa Pisani in Stra is a fantastic spot for organizing “open air” concerts or festivals. Two palaces stand facing each other, both fenced in by a high stone wall, with a gorgeous park landscape between them, where a big pool stands out among the horde of neatly trimmed exotic plants and shrubs. The stage was set up in front of one of the two palaces. By the time we arrived, Brazilian progressive metallers Angra were already warming up the crowd on it, promoting their latest studio album “Temple Of Shadows” (2004). Sadly, we missed half of their repertoire too, but nobody sweated it too much, because for all the greatness Angra have to offer, Dream Theater were the main target of the night.
Angra are fantastic live! Devastatingly explosive, uncompromisingly focused on the dominance of that white-hot, lively South American temperament, hellish speed and absolute metal intensity, all caught in intricately built compositions that nevertheless share a gorgeous expressive compactness and a superb sense of how to structure a song, “head and tail.” The song Carolina IV from the album “Holy Land” (1995) hit straight in the vein, and singer Edu Falaschi, especially early on, nailed the timbre of ex-Angra singer Andre Matos. With this progressive beauty, laced with Castilian folk elements, Angra further confirmed how tightly locked-in they are. The band gave their maximum and wrapped up the three-quarter-hour set with the ultra-fast sawing-through of Carry On from their debut “Angels Cry” (1994). Judging by what I saw and heard at Villa Pisani, Angra remain the first fiddle of the modern progressive metal scene even today. The guitar duo of Bitencourt/Louriero reigns supreme in a performance of equally matched solos, hellish picking over the riffs, triple harmonies and famously polished motifs, serving up a gorgeous dose of shamelessly listenable melodies. They’re “spot on” in sync and play without mistakes. The guys showered us with a hail of emotions, and singer Edu Falaschi especially shocked the crowd with his powerful, explosive “clean” vocals, going extremely high several times and keeping tremendous power even in the highest registers. I hope James LaBrie (Dream Theater) saw and heard Falaschi too. That this isn’t just another “xy power metal crybaby” is also proven by the fact that in 1994 Falaschi made the shortlist of candidates for Iron Maiden’s singer, when they were looking for a replacement for Bruce Dickinson. People went nuts. By then, some 4000 of them had packed in between the front row and the mixing desk, all cheering the band on enthusiastically. Well, since Dream Theater were the main attraction of the evening after all, the fans who know Angra shows very well pushed to the front during the closing Carry On to secure a spot as close as possible to the long-awaited Dream Theater. Suddenly a gap of about 20 meters yawned between me and the crowd, which those of us who had stayed in the back dutifully filled in.
Dream Theater started at 10:00 PM. They got the audience on their feet right away in the best possible way. There were around 7000 people. Dream Theater opened their set with the by now cult Metropolis Pt. 1, a golden-era song from “Images And Words” (1992), which they blasted out with full perfection. After it they smoothly switched to the current studio album “Octavarium” (2005) and The Root of All Evil, then on to “Falling Into Infinity” (1997) with the groovy Just Let Me Breathe, which the crowd greeted with a roar. In fact, fans went crazy at the intro of every single song on the setlist, so the atmosphere that Dream Theater dictated on stage, combined with the “horny” hot-blooded Italian zealots, was truly phenomenal. “Octavarium” was represented by two more excellent prog metal juggernauts. First came Panic Attack, which flowed into Never Enough, and the “Octavarium” trio was wrapped up by Sacrificed Sons, which, in its interpretation of supersonic solos, simply took the gold medal among the three. Dream Theater didn’t forget songs from “Metropolis Pt. 2 Scenes From A Memory” (1999) either. One of the concert’s highlights was the performance of Home. An outstanding oriental intro and then an adrenaline shot straight into the vein with an energetic riff. Rudess and Petrucci shone with incredible speed and hair-splitting tightness at the same time, resulting in remarkable precision as they machine-gunned a boundless sea of notes. At times it looked like the solos had no end. The guys discharged the atmosphere with the ballad The Spirit Carries On, which Petrucci subtly opened with a beautiful drawn-out solo, spiced with bluesy touches. The band ended the show after two hours with a bright spot of the album “Train Of Thought” (2003) called In the Name of God, in which they attacked the stage with all the firepower available, spewing it out of their toys. For the big finale they wrapped up the main part of their repertoire in such a dizzyingly wild and raging way, in top gear. The encore was slightly “botched” by the song choice, as they opened it with As I Am (the encore is a place for surprises and obligatory cult songs, and As I Am unfortunately is neither), but they fixed the impression with another classic (finally!) from “Images And Words”, the probably well-known Pull Me Under, which sent the crowd into ultimate delirium. After two and a half hours, the concert was over.
A Dream Theater concert is a manifestation of devastating speed in running through musical scales, and in that the guys are definitely the first fiddle of the progressive genre. That’s exactly why their performances are so attractive and prized. They always deliver top-notch sound and, amid all the lightning-fast stage madness, utter perfection in textbook onstage tightness! LaBrie sang excellently, never losing his voice in the high registers. Maybe they’ve gotten a bit more serious over the years. Of their special show tricks, only one is left: Mike Portnoy’s stick-tossing way up to the spotlights. What did stick out a bit was Petrucci’s reserve and isolation; he was rather withdrawn during the show and pushed off to the right side of the stage, visibly distant from the other four. The bald-headed “kid” Rudess had a nice top with musical staves on his “continuum fingerboard.” Petrucci, who carried all the staves in his head, whirled out solos with his famous destructive speed, while Rudess followed him spot-on in harmony by reading the sheet music off a monitor. Baby-faced Mike Portnoy wore a blue Italian national basketball team jersey with “Portnoy 10” on the back, which the audience absolutely loved. During the show he raged tirelessly in his famous steam-locomotive style. Interestingly, though, his drums weren’t set up out front, as was typical of Dream Theater’s 2000 show at Križanke, when his kit stood almost at the microphone. The Italians chanted: “Pe-tru-cci, Pe-tru-cci,…” and I could finally hear that name pronounced correctly in its native language. Dream Theater stretched out most of the songs with extra solos! Improvisation is a piece of cake for them.
A Dream Theater concert, as mentioned, is always a one-of-a-kind spectacle that takes your breath away! This time was no different. Watching their shows live is simply dreamlike. On top of that, the ambience they played in was unique. Outdoors, surrounded by the beautiful achievements of architecture from a long-gone era. Okay, okay, not everything was ideal, because before the show I was mercilessly eaten alive by mosquitoes that took off in the middle of the park from the area of the nearby pool. I have just one gripe about Dream Theater. The guys badly “ignored” their debut “When Dream and Day Unite” (1989) and the album “Awake” (1994), so the setlist had too few of the classics that made Dream Theater shine, build their name and become big through the first half of the nineties. Still, we enjoyed a one-of-a-kind evening for a modest €32.00 and with two excellent support acts. Mike Portnoy greeted the crowd at the end with: “We’ll be back here in October!” And this time Slovenes won’t have to get lost across the vast expanse of the kingdom of hopelessly bad signage called Italy, because Dream Theater are already definitively confirmed to play Ljubljana’s Hala Tivoli (hallelujah!). So, see you this October, for a change in Slovenia!
Setlist
1. Metropolis pt 1
2. The Root of All Evil
3. Just Let Me Breathe
4. Lie
5. Endless Sacrifice
6. Panic Attack
7. Never Enough
8. Sacrificed Sons
9. Home
10. The Spirit Carries On
11. In the Name of God
encore:
12. As I Am
13. Pull Me Under
