I remember clearly buying Dream Theater’s much-anticipated first album When Dream & Day Unite when it was released in 1989, and being astounded at the levels of musicianship, harmony and melody, and sheer power of this new breed of progressive hard rock band, and I found myself a new favourite drummer in Mike Portnoy.
Roll forward three years and the often troublesome second album came out at a time when the music industry was about as far from hard rock and progressive metal as it was possible to be. The addition of James LaBrie to the band replacing the original singer, combined with the unexpected airplay and MTV exposure of Pull Me Under helped support a stint of worldwide touring, and platinum status for the record – Images And Words had brought the band the worldwide success that continues today.
The band are in between the release of The Astonishing and the planning for album number 14 next year, and have taken the 25th Anniversary year as the chance to take a very special show around the world, with two shows in Australia.
There is no support band, and an early start time of 7.30pm suggested a bit of an early night……..until you realise that we are getting two full sets, with a short comfort break, and a half-hour encore to boot!
The Palais is a seated venue, and the first set was met with enthusiasm and appreciation at the quality of the production and the undoubted musicianship of the band. There is not a huge amount of stage excitement with a Dream Theater show, and I found it frustrating at times when James LaBrie spends as much time offstage as he does fronting the band…..a consequence of the band having the extended instrumental pieces in many of the songs.
The first 70 minutes included opener The Dark Eternal Night (Systematic Chaos 2007) as a high-energy live favourite, and then the moodier The Bigger Picture (Dream Theater 2013) which saw many of the crowd assisting in the vocals. The first track to really highlight the extraordinary talent and tone of guitarist John Petrucci was Hell’s Kitchen (Falling into Infinity 1997), and this also featured Jordan Rudess roaming the stage wielding the famed Keytar!
From the 2016 latest album, we then had the pairing of The Gift of Music and Our New World (The Astonishing 2016) before the featuring of bassist and founder-member John Myung with a cover of Portrait of Tracy as a tribute to legendary bassplayer Jaco Pastorius.
This segued seamlessly into As I Am (Train of Thought 2003) which got much of the crowd out of their seats, and the nagging concern that the band was as much a jazz-rock outfit as a metal band was trashed by the insert of the epic riffing of Enter Sandman. As I Am is one song that encapsulates everything about the band in one (long) song: great songwriting, atmosphere, punch and aggression and sensational playing from all the band. The first set closed with a great version of Breaking All Illusions (A Dramatic Turn of Events 2011), and everyone took a deep breath.
The conversation around the bars was all about “that f**ken drumkit” of Mike Mangini and the sheer class of Petrucci’s guitar playing, and a sense of anticipation at the content of Act 2. As the crowd filed back in, the intro tape featured a mash-up of dialling through the FM radio in 1992 to hear snatches of what the band was up against……before Pull Me Under tore the roof off the Palais, got everyone off their seats, and set up the next hour, in which the band played through the album from start to finish.
Another Day followed, and then more frenetic air-guitar from the crowd as Take The Time ran through into an extended guitar work out from Petrucci as the outro. Surrounded brought the tempo down, but not the excitement levels in the crowd, and it all built-up to the crescendo of Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper in which “new” drummer Mike Mangini gets the chance to show off from within the cage of his enormous kit!
Under A Glass Moon sounded glorious reverberating off the walls of the restored Palais theatre walls, whilst the gentle Wait For Sleep which allowed the crowd to draw breath and enjoy the keyboard wizardry of Jordan Rudess as well as letting LaBrie stretch his vocal skills once more. The album-closer Learning to Live was as astounding as the rest of the show – impeccable musicianship all-round, topped off by a terrific light-show and high-quality sound.
Closing the show with the lengthy opus, A Change Of Seasons, in full from the 1995 mini-album, the band capped off a scintillating evening of prog metal magic. Influences were hinted at through the night, with the likes of Rush, Kansas and Styx among the prog-pomp sounds, while there is certainly the jazzier-rock influences of The Dixie Dregs and Colosseum apparent in some of the instrumental elements. However, the undoubted success of the band as a whole over 30 years now, is down to the fact that they have retained many of the same qualities from day 1, and as a result they will continue to keep drawing healthy and enthusiastic crowds worldwide for some time to come.
PHOTO GALLERY
Photos by Peter Coates at Inside Edge Photography
