I wasn't really slamming DT when I said they hadn't experimented since SDOIT, as most bands find their sound and stick to it; King Crimson are hardly the majority standard in that regard. I was just defending their latest 2 albums from accusations of stagnation, when I don't see how the final bunch of Portnoy albums were exactly breaking new ground for the band musically either.
There's no shame in not redefining their style, and sticking to what works, as it still works very well, as the success of DT12 has proven. I doubt DT are ever gonna blow me away again in the same way they did with their earlier albums, but without Portnoy they're still producing excellent songs like Bridges in the Sky, The Bigger Picture, and Illumination Theory, which are top-tier DT songs.
There are a lot of things in there that totally ring true! I
almost agree with you, and especially with the second paragraph.
Systematic Chaos isn't always brand new, no album is
always brand new and that absolutely includes Awake, which shifted its tone a lot but its songwriting discipline, not very much. The Dark Eternal Night, Repentance, and Prophets of War are three of the most unfamiliar songs in DT's discography, one after the other. Prophets of War, in particular, isn't a song you can explain in terms of other DT tracks. It's got the disco intro like... er, like Prophets of War. It's got the falsetto backing vocals of... The Test That Stumped Them All, I guess? Except not really. The riff's back on familiar ground, (though the chants it underscores aren't,) but its this offbeat song built around a steady evolving groove, which never actually takes a moment out for an instrumental section - it's vocals wall to wall. It's basically the opposite of every Dream Theater stereotype.
Repentance courts Porcupine Tree and Opeth, and is a rare long-form track with no metal aspirations whatsoever. Dense choirs of umpteen JLBs, brooding and cycling to an eerie head over increasingly grim guitar melodies. Compared to the other two, The Dark Eternal Night is more familiar territory, it's like someone turned The Dance of Eternity into a vocal song - but the vocals are completely alien, the rhythmic distorted screams are not something I ever thought Dream Theater would touch until I heard it with my own ears, and nor had they ever written a riff so growly and sludgey that those kind of vocals might ever match it. It's clearly DT, it's a song nobody but Dream Theater could ever have written, but it's also a song that they never did write until 2007, and we've never really heard its ilk since.
I only picked Systematic Chaos as one of the starker examples - I could not have imagined, in the days before Octavarium came out, for instance, that they'd have written a song like The Answer Lies Within, or I Walk Beside You, or Never Enough. Those songs utterly floored me, there was this sense of, "Crikey, is this Dream Theater?" There was also the curious layout with its ambient interludes, the Muse influence not just in the obvious places but also in The Root of All Evil, Panic Attack, Sacrificed Sons, the orchestra. They had a lot of new colours in their pallet with Octavarium, and Systematic Chaos replaced shades of grey with bold blacks and whites.
As I said, though, I
almost agree with you! I think A Dramatic Turn of Events was deliberately a very safe Dream Theater album, and agree that despite playing to its own formula more than any other DT album, it sounds utterly refreshed - a change is as good as a break, Mike Mangini has rejuvenated the band, and there's nothing wrong with writing music that's familiar if it's familiar and good. On DT12, none of the songs sound much like any other song in their catalogue for very long, and the self-title is as much a statement of how much they've moved as of how much they've stayed the same: "this is who we are
now" - but yes, their trademark sound is absolutely in there, it's a crucial part of the mix, and it's not something to be ashamed of. Bands would kill for an identity as distinctive as Dream Theater's, a signature style is something to be cherished, not hidden - Bridges in the Sky is classic Dream Theater in every sense of the word, it sits right in the centre of their comfort zone but it's another brilliant DT song. That's wonderful.
But I think the idea they stopped innovating at Six Degrees, whether intended as a slam or not, is a rather unfair mischaracterisation of a band that's still very creatively fertile. I don't think it holds up to much scrutiny, and I suspect has more to do with popping the old stuff on a pedestal than any dearth of ideas in the new stuff.
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Topic: Would you like to see Portnoy back in Dream theater? (Read 87199 times)