![]() ![]() Rather than being produced collaboratively, with all the band members making contributions, John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess went into a room, wrote all the music, and Petrucci knocked out the lyrics (and therefore must take the lion's share of the blame for the crushingly unoriginal concept). Musically speaking, on the other hand, it's a bit of a departure. So, lyrically speaking this is worn-out old rubbish, recycling an idea which has already been rehashed far too many times since Rush made bank with it. ![]() except, oops, the arbiters of popular culture take exactly the same stance in Rush's 2112! Just cover that song if you want to tell that story, lads, it's a banger and you've got the chops to do it justice. The mild references to music fading away because mainstream society "has no time for it" would be an original twist. If any musical form is about to get banned these days, it's far more likely to be rap or drill music. It's just not that clever or original a lyrical concept, and seriously, since the early 1990s rock music (and the less extreme flavours of metal) have been absolutely establishment. it was always going to be a bit of a hard sell to me. ![]() So for Dream Theater to do a two-CD concept album about the idea, running at over two hours. It's possibly one of the most overused plots in rock opera, next to "I had a bad childhood and now I have a sad" (hello Tommy, hello The Wall, hello S.F. What is it about bands continually going back to the "what if in the future the GOVERNMENT banned ROCK MUSIC" well? Rush did the definitive take on the subject on 2112 and still had a whole side of the record left to do some self-contained songs Zappa did an exhaustive treatment of it on Joe's Garage Styx blew themselves up when they tried it on Kilroy Was Here the Queen jukebox musical adopted it as the plot. It's not another Images and Words - but it is the album that Dream Theater needed to make at this point in time to win back some fan confidence, and to breathe life back into their music. Songs like Paralyzed are short not because they lack for ideas, but because all the fat has been trimmed off them they're lean, they're taut, they hit the notes they need to hit, they take a bow. Although prog metal, like any other prog genre, is a field which thrives on excess and embraces long-form compositions, the actual secret to good prog is the same as the secret to getting the best in any other artistic endeavour: namely, editing. After the sprawling morass of The Astonishing, this is a relief. That new commitment to tightness also extends to the songwriting and the album's overall length there's several songs here under five minutes, and the whole thing is over and done in less than an hour. It's hard to put your finger on, but you can tell it's back as the album opener, Untethered Angel, roars forth. There's just a bit more pep to their step this time, an extra dose of exuberance which feels like it went missing some time after A Dramatic Turn of Events. ![]() As they say, a change is as good as a rest after indulging in the departure from the norm that The Astonishing represented, the band come to Distance Over Time sounding refreshed and more vibrant. The Astonishing felt like Dream Theater trying their best to not sound like Dream Theater, because they'd become kind of tired of being Dream Theater their self-titled album felt a bit like Dream Theater by numbers, resulting an album which was alright, but not exceptional. On this album, the band return to the much more band-oriented approach that is more customary for them, with an intent on producing something tighter and heavier than that divisive piece. 2016's The Astonishing, a double concept album, was written in a way almost entirely unlike any preceding Dream Theater album, with Jordan Rudess and John Petrucci cloistering themselves away and writing the entire thing by themselves. ![]()
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