Awake is still better than every other Dream Theater record

[King Postwhore]

As a fan since 1992,  I've found that over the years I've played Awake much less than most DT albums sans SC.  So for me it's in the lower of my DT list.

[Ruba]

The thread title is still correct.

[Ħ]

I'm curious if the folks that are ragging on a lot of the Awake songs are in general bigger fans of DT's newer material or long time fans getting in during the early days.

Personally, I love Awake. For some reason I'm always surprised by how heavy it is, it's the most heavy album until ToT. Lie is awesome, LSOAD is beautiful, Scarred kicks ass and SDV is one of those out-of-left-field charming and endearing songs that add a new wrinkle to their already diverse catalog of songs.

I don't think Awake is that great, and I'm a fan of their FII/SFAM/SDOIT era.

...which may be considered "newer material".

Really? Wouldn't it be more sensible to call them "middle" material? They are albums 4,5, and 6 out of 11 albums so far.

[wasteland]

The way I see it is:

Proto-DT: foundation to WDADU Tour.
Old DT: Search for a vocalist - 15.03.95
Middle DT: Recording Of ACOS - End of SFAM tour
Modern DT: SDOIT sessions - MP's departure
Contemporary DT: Drummer Auditions - Now (and on)

[cosmicwxdude]

Awake was my 1st LP I got from DT and I like it a lot. When I first got into DT I was not really a 'metal' fan but I really got into Awake.    Images and Words?  Well I liked it but certainly not my fav.  My favorite to date is ADTOE. 

[Daso]

Wow, it's really odd to look at a thread like this. I thought Awake was regarded by almost everyone as a top 3 DT album at least. I'm quite shocked 

I agree with the title, though. I think Awake is their best album. Not necessarily because it has the best songs, I think Images and Words takes that spot, but I&W is nowhere near to the cohesiveness of Awake. Awake keeps a relative mood along the whole album without becoming tiring. It keeps varied while not losing the vein in which is is developed. I&W has the best songs, in my opinion, but doesn't retain the mood/doesn't flows as well as Awake. That's why I always rank Awake as the best album, but I&W the one with the best songs   

My personal favorites are Scarred, Voices, Lifting Shadows off a Dream (way beyond underrated), 6:00 and The Silent Man. And I think the lyrics to Lie are great, even though that argument is over at this point 

[JiM-Xtreme]

I think I would put Awake in the lower tier of DT albums according to my personal preference. It's certainly far from my favourite of theirs.

I say "I think" because my preferences to tend to fluctuate with time. For years I could barely stand FII, now I think it's a great album and I keep going back to it!

[Outcrier]

Translation: People like an album more than I do, so there must be some crazy reason why.

It's an overrated album is all.

Hardly. To my ears, at the very least. Simply put, "Awake" showcases Dream Theater's best blend of proggy and metal-ish influences. They really got it down to a T on "Awake". Nothing sounds forced or contrived and the music just breathes naturally. Like they didn't over think anything and just went with their guts. DT kind of lost this winning recipe in the following years and never really released anything as organic as this record. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed (loved even!) many of the albums they released after Awake (and I absolutely think "A Dramatic Turn Of Events" displays a much improved and re-energized DT) but they all pale in comparison to "Awake".

And I think I misplaced my nostalgia goggles many, many moons ago so that can't be it. 

[Outcrier]

Translation: People like an album more than I do, so there must be some crazy reason why.

[Thematt202]

No-one else think it sounds cold and uninviting then?

[Ruba]

No-one else think it sounds cold and uninviting then?

I agree with the cold. It is also very dark, to my mind. But I like those qualities in it.

The Silent Man and LSOAD are rather warm songs though.

[Thematt202]

To me it feels like the polar opposite to I&W.  I tend to associate mental images and "feelings" with music and this one feels warm, friendly and welcoming.

[FourthHorseman]

To me it feels like the polar opposite to I&W.  I tend to associate mental images and "feelings" with music and this one feels warm, friendly and welcoming.

You're talking about I&W right?

[hefdaddy42]

No-one else think it sounds cold and uninviting then?

No, not at all.

[Thematt202]

To me it feels like the polar opposite to I&W.  I tend to associate mental images and "feelings" with music and this one feels warm, friendly and welcoming.

You're talking about I&W right?

Yeah, I&W feels warm, Awake feels cold.

[Jaffa]

Awake is my... sixth or seventh favorite Dream Theater album.

Which is still pretty damn good. 

[Scorpion]

I'm not quite sure of the order of my Top 3 DT albums, but Awake is definitely among them. The other two are Six Degrees and Falling Into Infinity.

[Ħ]

I see why most people don't like Awake. It's a very deep album that takes a certain type of person to understand it. Awake's greatness stems not from its melodies, nor from its lyrics, but from the mood of the music. It's so difficult to "get" this kind of twisted beauty, this ephemeral darkness. The good qualities of albums like SFAM, SDOIT, and IAW are blatantly obvious and easily accessible, while it takes a long time to uncover Awake's hidden treasures.


















































jk, Awake suxx

SDOIT \m/

[BlobVanDam]

No-one else think it sounds cold and uninviting then?

I definitely do. IaW is such a lively, fun, inviting album. Awake is the complete opposite, and lacks part of the appeal of DT for me, even though I do like all of the album up until Lie.

[XB0BX]

I feel like almost all of the Awake songs are a collection of unrelated riffs and musical ideas, void of a coherent atmosphere, theme or emotion that ties the song together.

[manticore999]

Nahhh ... Awake is 'OK', but it has a bunch of fillers, like Space Dye Vest, The Silent Man, Voices, etc..  IAW, SFAM and 6DOIT are way better IMO, and are always in my rotation.  Awake isn't something I've listened to in quite a while.

[jayvee3]

I feel like almost all of the Awake songs are a collection of unrelated riffs and musical ideas, void of a coherent atmosphere, theme or emotion that ties the song together.

See, I feel the exact opposite - I feel the atmosphere in that album is what makes it more so than any other, and the flow and cohesiveness is stellar. I'm not sure I fully get the 'unrelated riff' bit either - there is a 3 part suite of songs (A Mind beside itself) which are obviously all directly related, sharing similar themes and melodies, as do parts of The Mirror and Lie sharing sections of SDV.. Ah well, different strokes for different folks. I guess the diversity of the music and opinions the band produces, is the thing that makes the band so amazing.. 

[XB0BX]

I feel like almost all of the Awake songs are a collection of unrelated riffs and musical ideas, void of a coherent atmosphere, theme or emotion that ties the song together.

See, I feel the exact opposite - I feel the atmosphere in that album is what makes it more so than any other, and the flow and cohesiveness is stellar. I'm not sure I fully get the 'unrelated riff' bit either - there is a 3 part suite of songs (A Mind beside itself) which are obviously all directly related, sharing similar themes and melodies, as do parts of The Mirror and Lie sharing sections of SDV.. Ah well, different strokes for different folks. I guess the diversity of the music and opinions the band produces, is the thing that makes the band so amazing.. 

I agree that the album itself has a certain atmosphere that exists between all the songs. What I meant, however, was that the songs themselves feel sloppy and  are lacking a certain "glue" that holds them together. The Mirror, Voices and Scarred are 3 of my favorite songs, but all 3 feel like they're just collections of random riffs thrown together. You know how people say the instrumental section of ARoP feels tacked on to the rest of the song? I feel like the entirety of The Mirror is "tacked on" to itself. And that's not even my big complaint with the album. My complaint is that the riffs feel randomly thrown together, and aren't half as memorable as the riffs on the previous album. Take the Time feels iconic, instantly memorable, and completely different from Learning to Live. The Mirror doesn't feel iconic, doesn't feel memorable, and feels exactly like Voices.

[LTE3]

It is the 2nd worse sounding (production wise) album. If it ever gets remastered you will still be wrong but that's just my opinion I could be wrong.

[Rattlehead]

I used to rank Awake somewhere around the middle of my favorite DT albums, but these days I hardly even listen to DT and if I was going to I'd rather listen to Awake over just about everything aside from I&W...

[jayvee3]

I feel like almost all of the Awake songs are a collection of unrelated riffs and musical ideas, void of a coherent atmosphere, theme or emotion that ties the song together.

See, I feel the exact opposite - I feel the atmosphere in that album is what makes it more so than any other, and the flow and cohesiveness is stellar. I'm not sure I fully get the 'unrelated riff' bit either - there is a 3 part suite of songs (A Mind beside itself) which are obviously all directly related, sharing similar themes and melodies, as do parts of The Mirror and Lie sharing sections of SDV.. Ah well, different strokes for different folks. I guess the diversity of the music and opinions the band produces, is the thing that makes the band so amazing.. 

I agree that the album itself has a certain atmosphere that exists between all the songs. What I meant, however, was that the songs themselves feel sloppy and  are lacking a certain "glue" that holds them together. The Mirror, Voices and Scarred are 3 of my favorite songs, but all 3 feel like they're just collections of random riffs thrown together. You know how people say the instrumental section of ARoP feels tacked on to the rest of the song? I feel like the entirety of The Mirror is "tacked on" to itself. And that's not even my big complaint with the album. My complaint is that the riffs feel randomly thrown together, and aren't half as memorable as the riffs on the previous album. Take the Time feels iconic, instantly memorable, and completely different from Learning to Live. The Mirror doesn't feel iconic, doesn't feel memorable, and feels exactly like Voices.

Cool, gotcha. I guess it's definitely one of those things where we differ somewhat in overall album opinion, but I do actually think you make an interesting point, and by all means some food for thought..

[Daybreak at the lake]

I always found Awake to be super harsh to listen to. The tone of the guitars and especially Labrie's voice are so grating on my ears.

I&W=All killer no filler

Awake=Mostly filler

[foxiqopher]

I think it's one of DT's best albums, however it's so different from two other best (I&W and SFAM) that it's not correct to compare and choose only one best album.
I am not native english speaker, so I cannot tell anything about lyrics, all foreign songs sound like instrumentals to me But as for music, I think that the way harmonies and melodies work on Awake was never repeated by DT neither before nor after. It is not technical music that shows off skills, but it's sort of like Schubert's Ave Maria - simple, not technical at all, but when you pay attention to all the harmonies in that song, you just get crazy because it seems impossible to come up with such simple, and yet such genius song. And the same kind of thing is going on in Awake, when I listen to it, I just cannot believe how every little detail melodically sounds almost trivial, yet absolutely beautiful and creative, and very different from what you'd expect from standard prog/metal cliches.

[Ruba]

Awake=Mostly filler

And still, your nick comes from a line from Lie...

[aprilethereal]

jk, SDOIT suxx

Awake \m/

[mdietr1ch]

I enjoy it when I'm listening to it, but when I'm not listening to it I don't enjoy it.

[Cable]

No-one else think it sounds cold and uninviting then?

I do, and solid pun. Sounds thin to me also.

[rush-signals]

I only care about a few songs off Awake; CIAW, Voices, TSM, LSOAD. I'll take FII over it any day!

[Zook]

Every song is gold except Space Dye Vest... Which is tarnished silver.

[Daso]

I think it's one of DT's best albums, however it's so different from two other best (I&W and SFAM) that it's not correct to compare and choose only one best album.
I am not native english speaker, so I cannot tell anything about lyrics, all foreign songs sound like instrumentals to me But as for music, I think that the way harmonies and melodies work on Awake was never repeated by DT neither before nor after. It is not technical music that shows off skills, but it's sort of like Schubert's Ave Maria - simple, not technical at all, but when you pay attention to all the harmonies in that song, you just get crazy because it seems impossible to come up with such simple, and yet such genius song. And the same kind of thing is going on in Awake, when I listen to it, I just cannot believe how every little detail melodically sounds almost trivial, yet absolutely beautiful and creative, and very different from what you'd expect from standard prog/metal cliches.

What? I mean, I'm not a native english speaker either but I do know how to speak english (just like you do, since you could write that whole paragraph) and I understand the lyrics and talk about them. Unless you used a translator, then I take back what I said