DT15: A View From The Top Of The World (Timeline for DT15)

[Setlist Scotty]

In reading these posts about the cover for d/t, I just remembered the fact that the cover image you're all discussing is *not* the first thing that HS had proposed to JP. The first one was far more simple - it's the red cover of the vinyl as seen in this image:


Don't remember where I read it, but JP told HS that he wanted something more than that (or something to that effect), and that's when HS came up with the cover with the robot hand and skull.

Besides the obvious flaws, the one other thing that bugs me about some of HS's artwork - in particular the covers - is the lack of creativity when incorporating the Majesty symbol in the artwork. For me, the way it was done for BCaSL, ADToE, L@LP and d/t was pretty poor.

[Buddyhunter1]

I kinda like that "simple" version actually. Though I would have gone a step further and removed the Dream Theater logo entirely, considering "d/t" is already on the cover. They've never done that though and I kinda doubt they ever will.

[MirrorMask]

The "red" made me realize we never really had a "red" DT album. It's kinda hard to pinpoint a specific color to a cover art.... d/t and Six Degrees are definitively "white" albums, and Awake and Trrain of Thought are black, but the others? what color is I&W? Octavarium is.... grey/green? Systematic chaos is... yellow/orange-ish?

[hunnus2000]

That shade of red reminds me of the same color on Rush's Hold Your Fire.

[lucasembarbosa]

The "red" made me realize we never really had a "red" DT album. It's kinda hard to pinpoint a specific color to a cover art.... d/t and Six Degrees are definitively "white" albums, and Awake and Trrain of Thought are black, but the others? what color is I&W? Octavarium is.... grey/green? Systematic chaos is... yellow/orange-ish?

Greatest Hit is mostly red... Front cover and back booklet at least.

[bosk1]

The "red" made me realize we never really had a "red" DT album. It's kinda hard to pinpoint a specific color to a cover art.... d/t and Six Degrees are definitively "white" albums, and Awake and Trrain of Thought are black, but the others? what color is I&W? Octavarium is.... grey/green? Systematic chaos is... yellow/orange-ish?

Interesting...  For me, what I think of:
WDADU:  I try not to
I&W:  Black, with yellow and red
Awake:  Black
FII:  Blue
SFAM:  Orange and black
SDOIT:  White with red
TOT:  Black
8VM:  Blue and green
SC:  Yellow and black
BCSL:  Black
ADTOE:  Blue
DT12:  Black
TA:  Blue and grey
DoT:  White

[Setlist Scotty]

I kinda like that "simple" version actually. Though I would have gone a step further and removed the Dream Theater logo entirely, considering "d/t" is already on the cover. They've never done that though and I kinda doubt they ever will.

If you're referring to the Majesty symbol, there are a few live releases where it is missing: L@tM, OiaL and LSFNY (original cover). If you're referring the the band's name, it is not on the self-titled album.

[Buddyhunter1]

If you're referring the the band's name, it is not on the self-titled album.

Good point. I think I've seen several variations on that one, and at least one has the band's name on it (but not in the font that was used from I&W onward except for Falling Into Infinity)

Like Bosk said, I don't think about WD&DU much.

[fadetoblackdude7]

I'd like to have a 'red' album. Maybe have a blood red sky with the logo in white against it? That'd be cool

[Kotowboy]

I'd like to have a 'red' album. Maybe have a blood red sky...

With a crowd gathered in black and white ?

[Architeuthis]

I'd like to have a 'red' album. Maybe have a blood red sky...

With a crowd gathered in black and white ?

Operation Mindcrime? 
I'd like to see DT have a green-theme of some sort. Kind of a darker green background with the DT font black in the lettering with nuclear green glowing around it. Or something like that.  🤔

[Kotowboy]

U2 - New Year's Day.

[Revenge319]

I'd like to see DT have a green-theme of some sort. Kind of a darker green background with the DT font black in the lettering with nuclear green glowing around it. Or something like that.  🤔

I've always wanted a primarily-green album cover, just because it's a color that's almost never used in Dream Theater's album covers. Octavarium has the grassy field, and there's bits of green on The Astonishing, but there's never been one where green is the main color.

[IDontNotDoThings]

The light in BC&SL's cover is probably closer to grey or pale yellow if you analyse it, but for some reason it always looked green to me.

[Fritzinger]

That shade of red reminds me of the same color on Rush's Hold Your Fire.

I was JUST gonna say that! I actually like that simple HYF like cover now, but I'm sure that if it had been the "only" cover for D/T I would have ranted over HS again for weeks 

[IgnotusPerIgnotium]

If you're referring the the band's name, it is not on the self-titled album.

Speaking of which, it's gotta be their weakest cover. JP said that the simplicity of it conveyed a mystery of some sort but I think it's way over simplified and dull. On the other hand DoT has a nice cover and I think it suited the music of the record pretty well.

Generally I think that MP's era of album covers were more diverse, interesting and more iconic than the one's we got after he left. There was an attention to detail and thought behind what JP & MP wanted to create, so their vision may influenced the artist in a more productive and direct way.

[Kotowboy]

I actually think Black Clouds is amongst their worst cover art.

I'm just not a fan of copy and paste clip art collage style.

[Evermind]

The "red" made me realize we never really had a "red" DT album. It's kinda hard to pinpoint a specific color to a cover art.... d/t and Six Degrees are definitively "white" albums, and Awake and Trrain of Thought are black, but the others? what color is I&W? Octavarium is.... grey/green? Systematic chaos is... yellow/orange-ish?

Without googling, here's what I remember about the covers

WDADU: oof, purple and flesh?
I&W: yellow and beige and brown and red
Awake: black and grey
FII: blue
SFAM: orange and black
SDOIT: beige and cream
TOT: black and grey
8VM: black and blue and green and metallic
SC: eh, very urban. concrete, somewhat yellow, Mexico tint I guess
BC&SL: black/brownish
ADTOE: azure
DT12: yeah, black
TA: grey
DoT: white/grey

[Setlist Scotty]

I actually think Black Clouds is amongst their worst cover art.

I'm just not a fan of copy and paste clip art collage style.

I'm the opposite - I think when it's done in a well designed and executed way, the outcome can be really good. The Awake cover, which is another in that same style, is my favorite cover art of DT's. IaW and BCaSL are both in that same style too, but neither is as well executed. I can forgive IaW much more so because of Photoshop being in its infancy back then, and I don't think Larry Freemantle had as much experience (or budget) to pull off the cover properly.

BCaSL could have been good if it would have been executed properly. So much of it does look slapped together quickly. Just look at the wonky angle and perspective of the Majesty symbol - never mind that it looks like it's just a stain on the floor. When MP asked me to do the Black Clouds and Silver Anniversary image, I wanted to make sure I didn't fall into the same trap. So that's why I made the Majesty symbol look like a marble inlay in the floor (at the proper angle and perspective!), and I really focused on trying to get the lighting, shading and shadows of the various objects to be as accurate as I could.

[fadetoblackdude7]

BC&SL is one of my favorite covers from them. It's dark but beautiful and easy on the eyes, and I think it's well executed - one of HS's better DT covers.

[Cool Chris]

When MP asked me to do the Black Clouds and Silver Anniversary image...

You did that? Neat! I am cleaning out my garage and literally 10 minutes ago pulled out that poster. Ah, to be single again when I could have film and music posters hanging on my walls.

[Kotowboy]

I think The Astonishing is their best album art.

It just looks classy and doesn't have that weird cartoony feel of Hugh Syme.

[ThatOneGuy2112]

I've always really loved the ToT album art. The dark painted aesthetic really suits the music on that album, and makes me wish they would go for another painted piece sometime.

Also really like 8V's art. It's visually striking and quite mysterious looking. I didn't really know what to expect to hear before listening to it (8V was one of my first DT albums). It's simple but in a good way that builds intrigue (a bit like what they intended for DT12's art but more successful).

[IDontNotDoThings]

I don't recall what interview it was from (I think it was from the D/T in-studio interview thing), but I remember at one point JLB said that BC&SL was his favourite DT cover art.

[Ben_Jamin]

Octavarium has the best cover. It's all Uber Nuggets is why I like the cover and the Liner Notes. 5's and 8's and 3's will always haunt me.... 

I wonder what Mangini thinks about Octavariums Nuggets...

[Peter Mc]

In reading these posts about the cover for d/t, I just remembered the fact that the cover image you're all discussing is *not* the first thing that HS had proposed to JP. The first one was far more simple - it's the red cover of the vinyl as seen in this image:


Don't remember where I read it, but JP told HS that he wanted something more than that (or something to that effect), and that's when HS came up with the cover with the robot hand and skull.

Besides the obvious flaws, the one other thing that bugs me about some of HS's artwork - in particular the covers - is the lack of creativity when incorporating the Majesty symbol in the artwork. For me, the way it was done for BCaSL, ADToE, L@LP and d/t was pretty poor.

Red cover looks pretty nice but looks very Rush to me.  I quite like the cover they went with though, more-so than some of the other recent ones.

Funny that you mention the original LSFNY cover not having the majesty logo on.  I always remember trying to work out if they'd arranged the barbed wire into the logo but alas no.  Don't think the majesty logo is on the art book cover for the Distant Memories live album either.  At least I've never found it anyway.

[RaiseTheKnife]

The artbook for the U.K. release has an unmistakable and pretty cool looking logo.  That's the version I purchased.

[Fritzinger]

When MP asked me to do the Black Clouds and Silver Anniversary image, I wanted to make sure I didn't fall into the same trap. So that's why I made the Majesty symbol look like a marble inlay in the floor (at the proper angle and perspective!), and I really focused on trying to get the lighting, shading and shadows of the various objects to be as accurate as I could.

Could you post a picture of that please?

[gzarruk]

Of course, how much of it they play would depend on whether they are still doing an evening-with show, or whether they are touring with another band (such as a certain co-headlining tour I heard rumors of a little while back).

Quoting this post from the SDOIT anniversary thread because it reminded me of the co-headlining tour that MM teased a year ago on an interview, that obviously never happened because of covid.

Touring still isn't a sure thing yet, and DT15 will apparently be released towards the end of the year, but I don't think they've scrapped the plans to do this. 2022 maybe?

[jadiggerdt]

New album will be released in sept. Hopefully tour from jan 2022. #fuck covid

[Cool Chris]

What was the rumor/tease of the co-headliner?

[geeeemo]

What was the rumor/tease of the co-headliner?

[gzarruk]

What was the rumor/tease of the co-headliner?

MM originally said here: https://youtu.be/9sDyhyC8A5k?t=574 that they were planning a special tour with someone else for the fall (2020, before everything went down). And now you get Bosk's post, who we all know might have heard something from good sources

I don't think any other member has made comments about this, but if it was such an special tour they were planning, I think they'd try to keep it in the cards once/if touring is possible again.

[Stadler]

I actually think Black Clouds is amongst their worst cover art.

I'm just not a fan of copy and paste clip art collage style.

I'm the opposite - I think when it's done in a well designed and executed way, the outcome can be really good. The Awake cover, which is another in that same style, is my favorite cover art of DT's. IaW and BCaSL are both in that same style too, but neither is as well executed. I can forgive IaW much more so because of Photoshop being in its infancy back then, and I don't think Larry Freemantle had as much experience (or budget) to pull off the cover properly.

BCaSL could have been good if it would have been executed properly. So much of it does look slapped together quickly. Just look at the wonky angle and perspective of the Majesty symbol - never mind that it looks like it's just a stain on the floor. When MP asked me to do the Black Clouds and Silver Anniversary image, I wanted to make sure I didn't fall into the same trap. So that's why I made the Majesty symbol look like a marble inlay in the floor (at the proper angle and perspective!), and I really focused on trying to get the lighting, shading and shadows of the various objects to be as accurate as I could.

I'd not seen that before.  That's bad ass, bud.  Nice work.

[Setlist Scotty]

You did that? Neat! I am cleaning out my garage and literally 10 minutes ago pulled out that poster. Ah, to be single again when I could have film and music posters hanging on my walls.

I did - glad you enjoyed it. And yeah, I can relate to batchelor decor as opposed to married decor! 

Could you post a picture of that please?

I don't have the poster image handy, but seeing as the same image was used (with a few tweaks) for the last/latest edition of Lifting Shadows, hopefully this will work for you:

I'd not seen that before.  That's bad ass, bud.  Nice work.

Really? Surprised you hadn't! But thanks for the compliment!