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Dream Theater


Progressive Metal

3.19 | 1256 ratings

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Prog Reviewer
3 stars As we all know this debut by DT can be called a false start more or less because the band was besides unexperienced also working with their original singer, Charlie Dominici who in my opinion is no match for his successor James LaBrie. I don't really know why he left the band, I just know he left after this album and DT improved drastically with their next album, the famous Images and Words. So whether that was due to LaBrie or to improvement in production and compositions, I think it's a combination of all these things.

Talking about production. The production of this debut is below par. The sound is thin and deminishes the quality of the songs. This is proven by the sound of Live at the Marquee, the first official Live album from 1993 where DT played two songs of this album and these sounded a lot better, much richer than on this release. So that's a big minus for the album. But besides that the songs, and then I mean the compositions are not yet good enough at this stage of their career because if you listen to them individually and wonder where the inventivity is that became their trademark later on you will have to conclude it's hardly there. It can be no coincidence that the two songs on this album that do have this inventivity (Ytse Jam and The ones to help to set the sun) are the best tracks of the album. The other six are fairly simple unimpressive compositions, still good enough for roundabout 3 stars each I believe but no more than that. Just the 2 middle tracks (Killing hand & Light fuse and get away) are the slightly better ones of these six. The stand out tracks are Ytse Jam, a great instrumental and the first sign that this was a band with potential. The ones to help to set the sun proves that they can also do it with a vocal contribution in the song.

So all in all a mediocre debut mainly due to poor production and immaturity and inconsistancy of composing songs. Still not a bad album altogether and a must have for the real fans.

progrules | 3/5 |




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