Favorite Epics?

[Octavarious]

As this is becoming a welcome thread, hi to you all, I'm Giorgio from Italy.

[TheAtliator]

I'm Dennis from California and I am a Octavariumaholic.

[Sacul]

In the Presence of Enemies & A Change of Seasons.
Illumination Theory and SDOIT
Octavarium.
The Best of Times.

[Rodni Demental]

These are sort of more Mini Epics but... Breaking all Illusions, In The Name of God are right up there and measure up to all of the other full epics.

Then Illumination Theory, A Change of Seasons, and Count of Tuscany have to be acknowledged for their awesomeness.

Octavarium is great but it gets enough recognition and is well appreciated compared to some of the epics.

I don't know if this counts, but A Mind Beside Itself has to be my favourite suite, and arguably 'epic' (if it can be argued as potentially being one). Voices is the highlight, but I don't think anyone complains about it being sandwiched between such awesomeness as Erotomania and The Silent Man.

Also, the ultimate 'epic' has to be the 12 Step Suite. You could argue that a majority of the songs in here are 'mini epics' in themselves, so string them altogether, and DT can't get more epic than that IMO.   

[Daso]

A Change of Seasons is definitely my favorite, and my second favorite DT song overall. It's followed (as an epic) by Octavarium and Illumination Theory comes third, at least for now.

Also, I like the parts better than the whole for 6DOIT. I've never been able to find it cohesive enough to call it one huge song, even knowing it actually is.

[wolven74]

Hi Max! Welcome to the show....

The best epics are

1. Learning to Live
2. Octovarium
3. Illumination Theory
4. A Change of Seasons
5. Trial of Tears (mini epic)
6. Six Degrees

Then order is, of course, debatable.

[Max98]

 :mehlinI'm really happy with all of the replies that this post has gotten. Never in a million years did I expect to find as much support for a first post.

Regarding what constitutes an "epic", I consider the "monster" of an album to be an epic. Metropolis being an exception to that rule, as it spans 2 albums and over a dozen tracks. Usually the "monster" of an album is the longest or last song on the album. For example, off of Awake, the monster track is not Space-Dye Vest (though I wish they could have lengthened the song and made that song the monster), but Scarred. Therefore, Scarred is the "epic" of the Album. I trust the intellect of the Dream Theater Forums community to figure out what the "epics" are.


One last thing, I don't believe in "mini-epics". I would never call Trial of Tears a "mini- epic". It is a full-fledged epic in its own right. It's about the influence.


I might make a poll for this though...

[adastra]

I didn't think Trial Of Tears as an "epic"  , but yeah.. It might just fit in the category.
At least it is "the Epic song" from Falling Into Infinity.

But yeah,  It's perfect song.  10/10

[BlobVanDam]

Regarding what constitutes an "epic", I consider the "monster" of an album to be an epic. Metropolis being an exception to that rule, as it spans 2 albums and over a dozen tracks. Usually the "monster" of an album is the longest or last song on the album. For example, of of Awake, the monster track is not Space-Dye Vest (though I wish they could have lengthened the song and made that song the monster), but Scarred. Therefore, Scarred is the "epic" of the Album. I trust the intellect of the Dream Theater Forums community to figure out what the "epics" are.


One last thing, I don't believe in "mini-epics". I would never call Trial of Tears a "mini- epic". It is a full-fledged epic in its own right. It's about the influence.

On DTF, the general consensus has always been that the 20+ minute songs are what are strictly considered the "epics", being ACOS, SDOIT, Octavarium, ITPOE, and IT (although that one is arguable given the easter egg ending).
Sometimes that is stretched to TCOT, LTL, ITNOG, Trial of Tears etc, although that's getting somewhat blurrier! So usually we just say mini-epics to cover a lot of the longer than average stuff, the kind of stuff you're thinking of.

That's not to say these songs aren't "epic" in a musical or prog sense at all, I guess it's just that by DT standards, we have to reserve the classification for the rarer cases!

And welcome to the forum.

[The Stray Seed]

As this is becoming a welcome thread, hi to you all, I'm Giorgio from Italy.

Yaaay!!!! Another italian!!! Yaaaaaaaaaay!!!!!!!

Benvenutissimo!!! =D

[Nearmyth]

Octavarium.

I usually don't like picking the unanimous obvious choice, but Octavarium has an atmosphere and feel that, for me, cannot be beat by any other Dream Theater album.

It's build up and build up to one of Dream Theater's greatest finales ever. I often forget that the first 12 minutes of the song is generally very soft and laid back, at Full Circle shit starts to get real, then at Intervals you're like oh shit.

My favorite section is actually probably Medicate. The main theme reprise in the chorus is beautiful, nostalgic, epic, amazing. The bass, the drums, everything about it. It gives off such a unique atmosphere. Especially if you're listening to the album as a whole, and you realize, "Wait... I heard that in The Root of All Evil, and in The Answer Lies Within, and earlier at the beginning of the song... woah??"

Great song, it's somewhere in my top 10 like i dont even know, #6 I think.

Btw, I only count DT's 19+ minute songs as their "Epics." Songs like The Glass Prison and Learning to Live beat Octavarium to me.

[Rodni Demental]

Regarding what constitutes an "epic", I consider the "monster" of an album to be an epic. Metropolis being an exception to that rule, as it spans 2 albums and over a dozen tracks. Usually the "monster" of an album is the longest or last song on the album. For example, off of Awake, the monster track is not Space-Dye Vest (though I wish they could have lengthened the song and made that song the monster), but Scarred. Therefore, Scarred is the "epic" of the Album. I trust the intellect of the Dream Theater Forums community to figure out what the "epics" are.


One last thing, I don't believe in "mini-epics". I would never call Trial of Tears a "mini- epic". It is a full-fledged epic in its own right. It's about the influence.

Allow me to convolute our perspective, even though we're all pretty much on the same page, it comes down to semantics. But take In The Name of God for example, it's widely accepted as an 'epic' but technically speaking it might not be. It's the longest song on the album but Vacant/Steam of Consciousness combo is the same length. Also the majority of songs are all 10-11 min on ToT and ITNOG is only 14 min, just a little bit longer.

If a song is split into sections it pretty much becomes a DT epic by default. For example: The Killing Hand, Trial of Tears etc. BUT, it gets confusing because defining a song by sections is the first step in turning the song into a suite which is essentially what Erotomania/Voices/The Silent Man is. These songs are connected as different sections according to the album booklet but it wasn't defined within one song like they usually have done. If they didn't call if 'A Mind Beside Itself' there's no way these songs would be associated to form an 'epic'.

Also, we have more complications like The Glass Prison (and the rest of the 12SS songs) all are split up into individual sections anyway to cover the '12 steps'. And half of these songs are all longer as individual songs than some of the commonly accept epics. Every single song in the suite could be argued as an epic in itself.

Technically speaking, maybe ADTOE doesn't have any 'epics' as the longest song isn't even longer than ITNOG and that's only a 'mini epic' in the sense that it's the longest track on the album and doesn't have defined sections. Heck, we start to get long songs like The Ministry of Lost Souls, A Nightmare to Remember and The Best of Times which are all simply considered songs, but they could be argued to be more 'epic' than some of the other so called epics. Not to mention the Count of Tuscany has undefined sections, but it's just simply too long for it not to be considered one. So, how is it fair to call Trial of Tears and epic, and not Lines in the Sand? They're almost the same length.

Then there's False Awakening Suite which is by all means, very 'epic' sounding but it's obviously not what we're talking about, even if it's split into sections. Too short...

I don't think I've clarified anything though but it's interesting to think about. 

[Kotowboy]

Octavarium
Six Degrees
In The Name of God
The Count of Tuscany


















A Change Of Seasons

[AngelBack]

8V, ACOS and SDOIT all have been in my number one spot so hard to say.  IT is amazing but not sure it will ever hit number 1.  ACOS, SDOIT and 8V, all seem to me to reflect some of MPs eclectic tastes and so we will prolly never see anything like them again (esp 8V) but that is ok.  IT is an amazing song and, for me, the time passes really quickly and it never seems like a 20+ min song.

[a8ac]

Octavarium>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> The known universe.

[N4Player]

1. TCOT
2. 8va
3. ITPOE