Label: Roadrunner Records
Release date: 04.06.2007
Production: John Petrucci & Mike Portnoy
Album length: 78.45 min
Genre: Progressive Metal
Unbelievable! What is there even left to say about Dream Theater? Every two years like clockwork, we get a new studio album from them. Good boys, I’m speechless. “Systematic Chaos” is the title of the new one. The title doesn’t exactly fit the rational stringing together of properly built school scales we’ve come to expect from the band, nor the ants on the cover, symbols of a strictly hierarchical social order, but at the same time, in the hurricane-force downpour of these tidy runs of textbook note sequences, Dream Theater are creating a truly systematic chaos. Yes, and absolutely! A fitting title. Is chaos even allowed in logic, Mr. Descartes?
The new album of course has no concept, since Dream Theater just don’t find the time for that kind of thing anymore. But the record is once again heavier, sharpened up metal-style, and compared to its predecessor “Octavarium” much more fragmented, despite the 24-minute suite that “Octavarium” carries, since I Walk Beside You, for instance, is a flash of brilliance Dream Theater haven’t pulled off since the days of Peruvian Skies. In an interview, Petrucci said the only thing the guys consciously kept in mind while preparing the new album was to strictly avoid any heart-wrenching, tender melodies. “Systematic Chaos” is a dose of a massive, saw-toothed assault of the band’s familiar metal orgies, and so it’s once again closer to “Train Of Thought” (2003). But it keeps the complexity we know all too well from Dream Theater.
The new album proves that the band lost its bearings a long time ago. Dream Theater today come across as a unit that doesn’t know exactly what it actually wants to express through its own lens on musical art. They act like a kid who’s tried every toy in the world, and that makes them seem awfully bloated and suffocating. Really, ever since “Metropolis pt. 2.: Scenes From A Memory” (1999), we’ve been witnessing more and more fragmentation of songs, repetition of motifs, and a chronic lack of freshness in the potential for new creative ideas. Dream Theater of course try to make up for the fact that they no longer know exactly what they still want to show with a sea of notes, with complex meandering through the most impossible combinations of stacked-up rhythms, progressively broken, naturally. All of this is of course breathtaking and attractive, since it constantly brags about pushing the limits of what’s possible whenever the human factor gets involved, in this case the fastest conceivable way of playing instruments. Dream Theater today act like a clumsy giant who breaks every single thing he touches. They play strictly at full throttle, raw, rational, and aiming for, at moments, “supersonic” speed. In this euphoric chaos, though, they’ve forgotten to express a clear essence, something that simplicity and conciseness so often bring and build. They act like a world wrestling champion who has beaten up every opponent there is and is now, in the final of all finals, trying to beat up himself.
“Systematic Chaos” is packed to the brim as far as running time goes. That only proves the band today cares little about highlighting quality moments, or about dedicating their albums solely to the best stuff they’ve composed. Or maybe they’re deeply mistaken in thinking that everything they throw together is the best anyway? Furthermore, the album doesn’t hide the band’s recent obsession with playing around with the work of heavyweight classics like Metallica and Iron Maiden. The songs Forsaken and Prophets Of War don’t hide their parallels with classic Iron Maiden, or with Bruce Dickinson at his best, in the main riff. The Dark Eternal Night and Constant Motion are, in their basic motifs, direct copies of Metallica’s legacy, both in the singing and the main riffs, with thrashing all over the place, thrashing that only real thrash bands pull off in a satisfying way. Where’s your own heavy metal, guys, the kind from your debut “When Dream And Day Unite” (1989)? A few more interesting moments on the new record come from Repentance, which has the most control in balancing guitar and keyboards, and, in its calmer passages, an enviable level of rich atmosphere.
The longer pieces The Ministry Of Lost Souls and the closing In The Presence Of Enemies pt. II, as expected, deliver, for all the thirsty Dream Theater fans out there, two songs that, given their length, are worthy of admiration. Besides Repentance, the first of the two is overall another more compositionally exciting moment on the record, made up of two separate parts. A dreamy, highly atmospheric first part of seven minutes, which the guys masterfully turn into a progressive metal charge, which of course is what they do best, with the atmosphere and melody of the first part returning at the end. The track has a common thread running through it and doesn’t contain a hint of overkill! In The Presence Of Enemies pt. II also delivers what Dream Theater have been doing very intensely all along! Combining technical complexity with elements of heavy metal into a kind of coexistence, despite the lack of inventiveness in moments where they use metal riffs, all of which sound borrowed, so The Ministry Of Lost Souls and Redemption remain the album’s best moments as far as “dream theatrism” goes. It’s also interesting that Jordan Rudess isn’t as expressive on the new record as on “Octavarium”. He mostly retreats to a considerably shrunken palette of different sounds. That’s why the new album limps in this department, since moments of experimentation are very rare. That only underlines the band’s stronger turn toward metal on the record.
“Systematic Chaos” is not a step forward for Dream Theater. It confirms that the band can no longer compose expressive (all their own) motifs that could stick in your ears up to and including 1999. Can the band really no longer write anything like what “Falling Into Infinity” (1995) had? Simply, in their need to prove strength, speed and unsurpassed precision, and in their desire to satisfy the basic needs of the fans, they overdo it from time to time. Yes. Even Dream Theater can get boring. As far as following the rules of school music textbooks goes, the album is good (is a bad Dream Theater album even possible in that case?), but artistically, Dream Theater are just regressively marching in place with it.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 7.5 / 10
Track list:
1. In The Presence Of Enemies pt I.
2. Forsaken
3. Constant Motion
4. Dark Eternal Night
5. Repentance
6. Prophets Of War
7. Ministry Of Lost Souls
8. In The Presence Of Enemies pt II.
Lineup:
James LaBrie – vocals
John Petrucci – guitar
Jordan Rudess – keyboards
John Myung – bass guitar
Mike Portnoy – drums
