In the movie "The Quick and the Dead," director Sam Raimi "pulls out all the stops" and uses "every trick and cliche in the book" vis-a-vis every Western ever made. And an all-star cast - including Gene Hackman, Russell Crowe, Sharon Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio, Keith David, and Lance Henriksen - all deliver "over the top" performances, with Hackman almost literally "chewing the scenery." It is one of the finest subtle parodies ever put on celluloid.
/ "Scenes From a Memory" is like that. DT pulls out all the stops, and uses every trick and cliche ever used in progressive rock. And DT's all-star cast of superb musicians - Petrucci, Portnoy, Rudess, LaBrie, Myung Co.
- all deliver "over the top" performances, with lots of musical "scenery chewing" going on. It is one of the finest amalgamations of prog-rock - and NOT just prog-metal - ever put on vinyl (OK, CD..
.) / It is almost impossible to review this album "piece by piece": it must be taken as a whole. Ostensibly a murder mystery, the story does get a bit convoluted: although there are a couple of suspects, fratricide enters the picture, as does the possibility of "spirit possession" (saying anymore would "give away the game").
Still, it is very well written, and extremely well-executed. / There ARE some influences here. Rush, certainly; a bit of UK, a bit of ELP, even a whiff of Zappa.
Most unexpected, however, were the strong Floydian touches, including the opening track (a gentle "lift" from Wish You Were Here), the opening of "Home," and especially the opening of "The Spirit Carries On," right down to the Gilmour-ish acoustic guitar, Waters-like lead vocal, and female chorus of "oohs." The "Overture" is excellent and, yes, "Dance of Eternity" is among the most exciting, even compelling, prog-rock instrumentals in quite some time (although the jam in "Fatal Tragedy" is just as good): the "mini-jam" from 3:58 to 4:30 is among the most jaw-dropping 30 seconds of prog in the past 20 years. / I do have some minor misgivings and criticisms, including that the album is somewhat "uneven"; that sections sometimes seem strung together in a haphazard manner; that Labrie, while an excellent vocalist, does not always have the best "timbre" for the material; that Portnoy relies just a bit too much on the double bass drums; and that the album is almost certainly "overlong" (it could definitely have benefitted from a "trim").
However, all of that is really beside the point, given the context. Because it is impossible NOT to be impressed - VERY impressed - by an album of this calibre: the composition, musicianship and production are all first-rate. Indeed, it comes as close as anything I've heard in the past 15 years to being what Peter Rideout calls "a modern masterpiece of prog.
" Yet even without a fifth star, I recommend this album as "all but essential" for any serious collection of prog-rock. Posted Sunday, June 06, 2004, 00:25 EST |
get when you cross "The Final Cut" with "Operation: Mindcrime"? No, that's not fair- it the latter.
It's also much heavier and full of more talented playing than either album. I the Wing") rather than the induction. And I can't think of anything less evocative of 1928 (or any other time besides the early 90s) than the metal onslaught that follows.
However, Petrucci is always amazing, managing to slip a bit of expression into the fret gymnastics, and the rhythm section is just as impressive as ever. LaBrie is once again segment; "Through My Words" into "Fatal Tragedy", for instance, makes him seem like a second-rate Freddy Mercury imitator- or Waters imitator, on "The Spirit Carries On"..
.all sublime, as are the horrible keyboards. "Home" is also notably heavy, but way too long retitled "Everyone gets a little gratuitous solo time, especially Rudess with his honky- much sums up my feeling when this one was over.
Whether they've changed all that whenever possible and this album gives me no reason to change my mind. The songs are still needlessly complicated and yet formulaic and uninspired. The lackluster lyrics that fit the song and fitting the music to the story, and as a result everything sounds contrived.
I hope Satan isn't reading this review because he'll have a pretty good idea how to torment me for all eternity. Still, the sheer number and dedication of DT fans, added to the band's instrumental proficiency, forces me to give this two stars. Posted Tuesday, June 15, 2004, 10:48 EST |
Given Dream Theater's enormous following, I guess it's high time that I "weighed in" with a review of one of their more popular albums.
Before commencing my review proper, however, I feel I should clarify just where I'm "coming from" on this one. Please bear with me. As a young teen, I was into artists like Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, and Uriah Heep for a couple of years, before being introduced to prog, and bands like Genesis, Yes, ELP, and Tull.
After that enlightening musical awakening, I never really looked back, though I still listen to Heep and Purple every now and then. (These days, when I want to really "rock out," I tend to turn to "axe-smiths" such as Jeff Beck, Steve Morse, Gordie Johnson of Big Sugar, or Zeppelin.) Though I have nothing against heavy metal as an art form, most modern metal doesn't do much for me.
I don't like screaming vocals, and often find the music of many of the newer acts to be too fast and aggressive for my middle-aged ears. I also tend to have real problems with the typical lyrical subject-matter of newer metal: I simply can't relate to that teen angst/anger and fascination with blood, violence, death and the devil anymore! Just as I soon outgrew horror novels, I now find many metal lyrics to be just plain silly -- dealing as they often do with issues quite beyond my daily concerns, and a supernatural world that I honestly don't believe in.
With that rather lengthy preface out of the way, the reader should understand that I find listening to the overlong SCENES FROM A MEMORY METROPOLIS PART II, in a single session, (and at the volume it demands!) to be a decidedly onerous task. Thankfully, vocalist LaBrie isn't much of a "screamer," though I do find his "average-guy" voice to be distinctly uninspiring.
The musicianship, especially the guitar, is also of a doubtlessly high quality, and there is just enough variety in the music to warrant their "progressive metal" categorization. (In my opinion, "progressive metal" has to imply more than just metal with keyboards.) What really stops me from giving this concept album a higher rating, is, as with Marillion's BRAVE (see my review), the theme of its lyrics.
The story centers around a murder-suicide, and the motif is made more "real" with the disturbing sounds of gunshots and the screams of the young female victim. I know that modern American society is very troubled with gun-related violence, and I can turn to American TV news or magazines any time I feel the need to "get my fill" of such depressing, tragic gore. I don't need, or want, to hear this stuff set to music as well!
As with BRAVE's suicide theme, I find the concept of "SCENES" to be simply unworthy of my time. I believe that there is a fine line -- perhaps crossed here -- between examining violence, and obsessing upon and/or "celebrating" it. I believe that confirmed metal/Dream Theater fans would award this disc four or five stars (as it is perhaps "good" for its genre), though for my own middle aged, fatherly tastes, SCENES FROM A MEMORY only merits a two-star rating.
Overall, I greatly prefer to be uplifted and/or moved by my music collection, instead of being "brought down" by it. Please don't get me wrong! I realize that some will object to the seeming high-handed, moralistic tone of this review, but I am no prude (quite the opposite!
), nor am I a supporter of musical censorship or warning labels. I am merely trying to articulate a personal point of view regarding my preferences in art, which I feel others may share. I don't mind a song that deals with suicide (see my review of Genesis - Nursery Cryme, and "Harold the Barrel" in particular), but when murder forms the entire theme of an album, and is graphically "portrayed" with gunshots and screams, I tend to recoil.
Dream Theater, Marillion, and others, have every right to release albums that deal with unsavory subjects. However, as one who tends to focus heavily on words and lyrics, I find listening to this CD to be just a little more enjoyable than viewing images of endless Middle Eastern atrocities, or reading the gruesome details of the latest killings by some gun-toting psychopath. Really not to my taste -- but perhaps to yours.
Posted Monday, June 21, 2004, 12:45 EST |
I'm not a metalhead of sort, but, with almost any criteria, for me, this is a five big star progressive metal concept album. There's absolutely no doubt about it. Firstly, instead of telling an epic story or tackling a grand overarching theme which is common among 1970s prog rock bands, these guys come up with a very intriguing, a young woman.
Apparently these guys want to sit on the shelf with "2112," "The Wall" and "Operation: Mindcrime." Secondly, dealing with a difficult tale and told the tale in complex fashion (see how difficulties for these guys in delivering amazingly, jaw-dropping music. The musicianship, Thirdly, the cohessiveness of the overall composition is so tight in which all the songs flow beautifully into one another, despite intricacies of the structure of several songs.
Because of its nature, in order to be truly appreciated, this remarkable, masterwork album must be listened with every song played in order. I myself particularly like it when the tones of the hypnotherapist, at the beginning, slowly flow into my ears and thrill me Posted Tuesday, June 22, 2004, 11:20 EST |
SPEECHLESS.
News RSS