Dream Theater: Black Clouds & Silver Linings (2009)
July 9, 2009
(Roadrunner Records)
- “A Nightmare to Remember” – 16:11
- “A Rite of Passage” – 8:36
- “Wither” – 5:26
- “The Shattered Fortress” – 12:49
- “The Best of Times” – 13:09
- “The Count of Tuscany” – 19:16
So Dream Theater’s latest album finally came out. After the horrible letdown that was Systematic Chaos, I couldn’t wait to see how hard they’d fail on their next attempt. I remembered eagerly waiting for Systematic Chaos’s release way back when, only to be horribly, horribly let down. It almost felt like Dream Theater had trolled me. It was a kind of disappointment that I simply couldn’t handle again. As a result, I listened to this new one expecting to be disappointed. Let me talk about this for a bit…
Dream Theater is a Progressive Metal band. They feature some of the most talented musicians on the planet: John Petrucci on guitar, John Myung on bass, Jordan Rudess on keyboards (and sometimes lap steel guitar), and Mike Portnoy on drums. It’s like a dream team, the likes of which you only see on all-star lineups that usually only release a cover song or something and then never work with each other again. Fortunately for us, Dream Theater has been together for more than twenty five years now and we have just now been blessed with their eleventh offering.
However, Dream Theater, since the release of Scenes from a Memory (1999), had noticeably been heading away from the “progressive” and more into the “metal”. They got heavier and heavier with each passing album with odd detours in one direction or another with each one. Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (2002) was a heavier rather experimental album considering its direct predecessor that never liked to stay in one place. They then took a nose-dive into the Thrashy end of the metal pool with Train of Thought (2003). Octavarium (2005) went back in the more Alternative direction with a lot of influence from the likes of Muse and a lot of very standard and relatively unimaginative song structures. Systematic Chaos (2007) sort of mixed Train and Octavarium together, featuring both more accessible sounds (“Prophets of War”, “Forsaken”) as well as the heavy metal explored in Train (“Constant Motion”, “The Dark Eternal Night”).
To be honest, despite being a metalhead, I was fearing for Dream Theater. Their trend towards getting heavier and heavier was wearing me thin. In addition, they didn’t seem to understand that LaBrie’s voice was getting progressively worse and that he cannot pull off the James Hetfieldesque raspy thrash voice they so desperately want him to be able to. LaBrie’s last great performance on an album was Scenes From a Memory. His last decent one was Six Degrees. Since then, DT fans have been polarized into those in denial who cannot accept that DT has a weak link and declares LaBrie still a wonderful vocalist and those who have simply learned to tolerate him.
Like any other fan, I was anticipating DT’s newest release eagerly. However, I also expected them to fail and was even making predictions as to exactly how DT would fail this time around. The time finally came. I put on my headphones and hit play.
The first listen through blew me away. Let me be straight. This is, in my opinion, Dream Theater’s strongest release since Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. It’s as if they took every mistake they made between then and now and actually learned from them. This is a great album. Every song feels complete and whole and each is unique and stands out on its own. The songs are all epic ballads with complete concepts in and of themselves.
One of the things I love the most about bands like Dream Theater is that they absolutely refuse to put a filler song on an album. For this reason, I’ll briefly take a closer look at each song.
The album opens with the sixteen-minute epic, “A Nightmare to Remember”. It is apparently about a car crash John Petrucci experienced. The song chronicles it in dramatic exaggeration. It is, for the most part, a heavier and darker song with a lot of blast beats and fast solos. There is one part, however, where Portnoy does this cute little rap that nearly destroys the song. Barring that, however, it’s a great and energetic opener that, in trademark Dream Theater style, takes you on a journey.
The second song is the shorter, “A Rite of Passage”. In my opinion, this is the weakest song on the album that is half the length of the first track and is half as enjoyable. If you don’t listen closely, the song passes by in relative monotony and doesn’t really feel like it goes anywhere…but at eight minutes, a song like this HAS to do something with itself. It’s still not bad, but is disappointing compared to the punch in the face that “Nightmare” was.
We then move on to “Wither”. This is, thankfully, a good song. It has a very alternative rock sound and even a very alternative rock length. While it’s short for a Dream Theater song, it is short because it needs to be. It does not overstay its welcome. Lyrically, it apparently talks about the frustrations of writers block, and is the strongest on the album in that regard, in my opinion. This song is a good and relatively soft intermission, so to speak, on the album.
The final song in Portnoy’s Twelve Step/alcoholism series is, “The Shattered Fortress”. This is the most fun song on the album solely because we finally get to see the series end. It has been years and years, and it has finally been concluded. It is a lot of fun and very nostalgic to hear melodies and riffs from all the previous songs play out together seamlessly in this one.
Next up, we have the melancholic yet light-hearted, “The Best of Times”. Written in honor of Portnoy’s father, who had been battling cancer and unfortunately passed away during the making of Black Clouds & Silver Linings, this song on the surface feels very light and happy. However, the melancholy written into the notes and lyrics makes itself evident. It is another longer song, clocking in at thirteen minutes, but most of that comes from the very long acoustic instrumental intro at the beginning.
The finisher on the album is definitely one of the strongest songs Dream Theater has ever released. “The Count of Tuscany” is an amazing nineteen-minute epic, telling the story of an encounter Petrucci had with an eccentric man while in Tuscany. The lyrics are equally quirky and entertaining. This song is a true journey in and of itself. The song is broken into four sections. The first and third are instrumental sections, the first reminiscent of “Hell’s Kitchen” from Falling into Infinity, and the second being a Rudess-centered one like the intro to “Octavarium” off of the album of the same name. The second and third sections are the parts with lyrics that tell the story. This is such a great song, I don’t know how I can do it justice in a single paragraph…it deserves a review on its own. Give it a listen, and you’ll know what I mean.
One of the things I enjoyed the most about this album was the amount of noticeable growth in Petrucci’s guitar playing. He has clearly gotten better and cleaner between Systematic Chaos and now, and it really shows. While his solos were less diverse than they have been in the past few albums, they are all still very enjoyable. His tones, however, are nothing but impressive on this album. I absolutely loved them all, and was taken aback by the amount of impact they had.
Portnoy’s drumming also matured a bit. It’s less showy than it was on Octavarium and Systematic Chaos. It’s a breath of fresh air, really, and makes the album feel a bit more balanced. Normally, I complain about drumming in metal having too little character and being too predictable. I can complain about the opposite only with a drummer of Portnoy’s caliber, who is unmatched in the world.
Myung is…Myung. His bass had its peak on “Metropolis” with his one solo and since then has stayed pretty much the same. This album is no different, though we do see more parts where the bass plays a melody independent from the guitar.
Rudess’s tones improve with every album, and this one is no exception. The tones he uses on solos on this album are particularly remarkable. The solos themselves are, as always, in trademark manic and abstract Rudess style, and they are fun as they always are. Everyone talks shit when a guitarist spews out too many notes, but never when a keyboardist does. Rudess knows that and abuses the hell out of that double standard.
LaBrie’s vocals have improved slightly from Systematic Chaos (where he was abysmal), but is nowhere near Octavarium’s level, while Images/Scenes/Six Degrees feel like a distant dream from another life.
I’ve said it already, but I’ll say it again. This is one of Dream Theater’s best albums. It’s difficult to rank them in any linear order, but it’s definitely up there with Scenes and Six Degrees. It is an epic album full of ballads. It maintains the heavier tendency DT has leaned towards since Six Degrees, but brings back the progressive all DT fans have been missing. I am so glad this album turned out this way, and so will you, if you haven’t listened to it already. Go pick it up right now.
This is an extraordinarily long review, I realize, and I apologize…but there’s just too much to say about this wonderful album.
Stephen’s mostly inane and irrelevant rating:
***** 5/5 Stars.
Cynic: Traced in Air (2008)
May 24, 2009
- “Nunc Fluens” – 2:56
- “The Space for This” – 5:46
- “Evolutionary Sleeper” – 3:35
- “Integral Birth” – 3:53
- “The Unknown Guest” – 4:13
- “Adam’s Murmur” – 3:29
- “King of Those Who Know” – 6:09
- “Nunc Stans” – 4:13
Now I’ve stated somewhere around this blog before that my tastes are most firmly rooted in metal and progressive music. I love metal music; I love progressive music. What I love even more is progressive metal music done well. That is why whenever you see me listing my top favorite bands, Opeth and Dream Theater are usually in my top two, and the likes of Meshuggah and Tool in my top 5. I have a strange affinity for heavy, dark and epic music. You get heavy in metal, dark in most metal and some progressive, and lots of epic in progressive and some metal. In addition, in metal you get lots of intricate and technical musicianship, as well as a raw intensity you just don’t really find in other genres. In progressive music (nowadays), you get even more technical (albeit not necessarily intricate) musicianship, innovation, and a sense of discovery and wonder built into the arrangements and composition.
Despite my being in utter love with progressive metal, I gave up on finding too much music in the area. There’s good metal, there’s good progressive, but nine out of ten progressive metal bands are complete shit. They plug the progressive tag into their music by adding in some keyboards, half-assed “orchestra” or “classical” arrangements, lots of fast-played scales, dissonant chords, clean vocals, and seven to eight minute songs. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t cut it.
Progressive is a pretentious term intrinsically; there’s no escaping that, I suppose. But if you’re going to label your music with a pretentious tag, at least be able to back that up. You need to write music that makes sense. It doesn’t need to be technical–it needs to be smart. It needs to be mature. It needs to instill that feeling that you’re listening to something interesting and fresh (without needing to actually be fresh). Experiment, be daring and adventurous in your music, for god’s sake. When you start writing and playing technical music for technicality’s sake, you get today’s Yngwie Malsteem, and we all know how that turned out (in case you don’t know, he’s washed up now; even Mikael Åkerfeldt of Opeth agrees with me: Read his blog on Yngwie Malsteem).
This is where Cynic comes in. I went on a spree recently, getting all sorts of new music; mostly doom, death/doom, and some old progressive and progressive metal music. I was suggested Cynic as well when I was searching through progressive metal stuffs. I had heard of them when they supported Meshuggah on one of their past tours, and being from the Tampa Bay, Florida area, I had previously brushed them off as another run of the mill death metal band. This time I took them a bit more seriously and actually took a good listen to one of their albums.
Let me sum up the impression this album left on me after I’d finished listening through it in as few words as I can: “Holy fucking shit”. Now let me elaborate. This is an absolutely amazing album. It is one of the best metal albums I have ever heard. It is fun to listen to, it is refreshing, and it is unpredictable. Most impressive is the way the entire album comes together. Throughout your listen, nothing ever feels out of place, and the concept is delivered flawlessly. I’m not the biggest fan of innovation/new things. I prefer a solid and well-written album to one that goes out of its way to be “new” and “innovative”.
Traced in Air, however, innovates and tries new things without messing it up. It is an absolute wonder of an album. From the get go, you’re drawn in with a fast intro track that builds up tension with each passage. By the end, you’re on the edge of your seat before it abruptly tapers off and leads into the next track. From there, you’re on a journey. It pulls you through measure after measure of fast paced and heavy melodies. It is heavy in its intensity, not its speed or its tone. The musicianship is perfect. Cynic does not add in extra notes where they’re not needed. The guitars are intricate and balanced (Paul Masvidal, Tymon Kruidenier). You can actually hear the bass (Robin Zielhorst, Sean Malone). The drum work is perfectly fitting yet has a manic personality of its own (Sean Reinert). Traced in Air grabs a hold of you and doesn’t let you go until you reach the end.
Perhaps the most interesting part of this album is the vocal work. It predominantly uses clean vocals fed through a synthesizer of some kind. It gives the vocalist (Paul Masvidal) a robotic and sort of inhuman feel. While generally when the vocals do appear, they still hold the leading melody, this effect really brings the instruments to the forefront. The vocals become another instrument in the band that only happens to narrate, and you are more easily able to focus on the music as a whole.
The perhaps weakest part of the album are the death growls added in now and then to back up the clean vocals. They simply are not that strong. Handled by guitarist Tymon Kruidenier, they lack any real impact or punch. However, they appear very sparsely on the album, and they never have a leading role, so I suppose it is forgivable.
In any case, Traced in Air is an absolute treat for the fan of progressive music, metal music, and progressive metal music. I absolutely did not expect to find a band of this quality ever in my lifetime; especially one that goes in such an unexpected direction such as this. I cannot recommend this album enough. It is beautiful, it is engaging, it is absolutely engrossing.
Cynic produces a sound not easily described in detail, but can be easily summarized in the album’s title. It has an esoteric and transcendental feel to it. The songs flow seamlessly from one to the next, taking you with them to some place unknown, but somewhere you know you want to be. The songs truly do feel like they were Traced in Air.
Stephen’s mostly inane and irrelevant rating:
***** 5/5 Stars.
Steve Vai: Sex & Religion (1993)
June 2, 2008
Epic Records
- “An Earth Dweller’s Return” – 1:03
- “Here & Now” – 4:47
- “In My Dreams with You” – 5:00
- “Still My Bleeding Heart” – 6:00
- “Sex & Religion” – 4:24
- “Dirty Black Hole” – 4:27
- “Touching Tongues” – 4:33
- “State of Grace” – 1:41
- “Survive” – 4:46
- “Pig” – 3:36
- “The Road to Mt. Calvary” – 2:35
- “Down Deep into the Pain” – 8:01
- “Rescue Me or Bury Me” – 8:25
I will admit that an album like Sex & Religion is not something I’m used to listening to; and I can assure that the same goes for you. There are not many albums out there quite like this one anymore. It features a star-studded lineup consisting of the great Steve Vai on guitar, Terry fucking Bozio on drums, T.M. Stevens on bass and a younger and lesser known Devin Townsend on vocals. From start to finish, this album is a wonderful showcase of mastery of musicianship, solid and mature songwriting, and, most importantly, good old rock ‘n’ roll.
Steve Vai is inarguably one of the best guitarists in the world, and is one who likes to experiment and try new things. I am not an avid listener of his, but I have dabbled in his work before. This is currently the only full album of his I have in my possession, and was rather surprised, as it was rather unlike anything else I’d heard from him before (before or after the release of this album).
The biggest surprise for me was Devin Townsend lending his talent to this project. This album is by far a throwback to classic and acid rock. I know him only from his much heavier and darker work with Strapping Young Lad and The Devin Townsend Band and the like. His voice is an unexpected, but in the end, works out very well.
The album opens up with a short intro song. It sounds epic and rather spacey…sort of trademark Vai. The opening track, “Here & Now” is like how any opening track should be: full of energy and just plain rockin’. It has that sort of Rock Out With Your Cock Out vibe to it. From there, Vai explores the three piece rock band with guitar leads, bass rhythms and drums. “In My Dreams With You” follows similarly, followed by a slower and more emotional “Still My Bleeding Heart”, which ends with a voice and drum solo by Townsend and Bozio. Fun stuff. Not exactly what you’d expect.
The title track, “Sex & Religion” is an anthem-esque song, featuring a catchy chorus and a fun everyman kind of riff without coming off as poppy. The songs in general are fairly standard in composition. They all for the most part feature the intro-verse-chorus-verse-chorus-redevelopment-chorus-end writing. However, the technical intensity and often manic energy of the songs still makes this a true blue Vai album, I guess. When you think “Vai album”, you come to expect these kinds of things.
“Dirty Black Hole” marks the end of the first part of the album, the last in a series of faster, heavier songs, with this last one being the fastest, in my opinion. From there, the album takes a short breather with the wonderful “Touching Tongues”, an instrumental guitar-oriented song. This is personally my favorite off the album, and when I don’t have time to listen through the whole album, I’ll skip to this fun and rather aesthetically optimistic tune. It is followed up by “State of Grace”, another instrumental track going for a Middle-Eastern aesthetic.
Immediately after the song ends, we are given a face full of Townsend’s screaming in “Survive”. The song transitions into an energetic and groovy beat in the tradition of funk and reggae. Next up we have “Pig”, a faster song that starts with Vai abusing the tremolo on his guitar. It is a return to the more Vai-ish spacey aesthetic, and utilizes some trippy voice samples and sounds.
This brings us to the second intermission of the album, “The Road to Mt. Calvary”…a rather frightening track full of random sounds more to set up a scenario than to relay a musical idea. It would not be out of place on a the album of the more theatrical Black Metal band. However, in sharp contrast, it transitions into “Down Deep Into The Pain”, a relatively aesthetically conservative song in the vein of classic rock. The second longest song on the album at over 8 minutes long, and features a lot of Vai’s godliness on that thing he throws around called a guitar.
The album closer is “Rescue Me Or Bury Me”. It is, to put it bluntly, a song featuring Vai soloing relentlessly, and assuring you that he is, in fact, much better at playing guitar than you and will always be better.
If the album were to have one drawback, it would be the lyrics. Cheesy, not very well thought out and just…not impressive. All of the instrumental performances are, however, nothing short of amazing.
It will be a harder album to absorb for those who are not quite in touch with more retro music featuring the power rock energy of the ’70s and ’80s, but if you can get past that barrier and just have fun with an album, you’ll enjoy this album just as much as I did and do now.
Thanks for reading.
-Stephen.
Stephen’s mostly inane and irrelevant Rating:
**** 4/5 Stars.
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