Dream Theater
A Dramatic Turn Of Events

Thinking about the latest effort by DT, one could hastily cite the Gattopardian maxim that everything must change so that everything can remain the same. Naive considerations; already the power of the new cover, in its sweet brutality, tells us how heavy the absence is.

A proud tightrope walker who lights the sun with his remaining candles: as he progresses, an illusory tear at the rope that supports him transforms dark gems into sonic diamonds. There is no merit in virtue just as there is no disenchantment in error; this, in kaleidoscopic terms, is the immediate meaning conveyed by the protagonist of the new DT garden.

A wanderer whose uncertain passage over a dying drapery paradoxically makes him more confident in the shadowy layers traced by the plane emerging between the clouds; the limping absence of Portnoy or the two-faced security of the present Mangini?

Hard to say, but it is certain that Petrucci's discreet Ego here, momentarily free from the oppression of the conscripted Portnoy, is free to express itself in all its linear hegemony. Circular follies; tracing the diameter is an unchanged flair from that enchantment called "Images & Words". Because, in the end, the sonic embroidery that for just over two decades has adorned the peaks of prog has constantly vividly recalled the eternal return of a placid ship painted in a painted ocean.

It is logical, therefore, that after two decades of ideological re-proposals, the inevitable antagonism (foreshadowed by that wonderful track from the previous album titled Whiter) between the two monads of the group has not created the inevitable compulsion to repeat. And so, in the most ruthless of beautiful truths, time has restored "A Dramatic Turn Of Events". An album whose beauty is only superficially banal, just as the multifaceted identity of the eye in the same face can be considered banal in seeing different identities.

The beginning is pure and simple iridescent beauty of an angry sun: dark arpeggios introduce a complex track that traces the "shoulders of angels"; a linear moment and disillusioned in its originality, yet a standard-bearer of the creative flair of both Petrucci, capable of introducing verses played on accelerated rhythms, and the "newcomer" Mancini. The latter drummer appears on the new stage as a hidden supporting actor; proudly and at times subordinately hypocritical, an imitator of the involuntary antagonist-predecessor, he silently performs a clever working-class act; supporting the vivid hegemony of Petrucci while erasing (or rather, vainly attempting to set aside) Portnoy. An unexpected constant, however, is attributable to Rudess' sonic garlands, a corporate midfielder yet skilled in making himself appreciated for a varied work that accompanies the usual orchestral carpet with some modern counterpoints.

Indeed, the dark affair immediately returns to its previous identity; Build Me Up Break Me Down, by embracing Portnoy's "technological" limit, resembles more a Linkin Park track in its restlessness than a Dream Theater one, partly thanks to a filtered LaBrie whose voice slips over us just like the song, fawning yet wisely captivating.

Decidedly more successful, however, is Lost Not Forgotten, where the piano intro scrutinizes ephemeral calm before erupting into a litany of wonderful melancholic prog; cobbled together in a dark and granite guitar riff, the song almost inadvertently raises a lively refrain that struggles to deviate from the listener's memories; time changes and syncopated accelerations petrify its images. Vividly inscrutable is the immeasurable play of Love; an existential tournament capable of dissolving memories, illusions, lyrical tournaments, schizoids, disenchanted joys, peaceful and sorrows in the space of a morning.

Petrucci knows this and does not hesitate to carve it into one of the most beautiful tracks of the work where the lyrics erect marvels: This is the Life, a psychic rainbow over the relativity of Being". Feed the illusion you dream about, Cast out the monsters inside": lustrous sonic textures on the six-string staff. This is the life we belong, a divine gift.

Divinity that, at least in a crypto-pagan form, erupts in all its mysticism in the next track; a quiescent linearity of a clear Gregorian chant is subsequently painted by a riff of Petrucci as persuasive as it is nervous. The soundscape fleetingly engages with violent rhythms where the newcomer seems free to express himself with the right intensity, adopting targeted emotional violence. Disenchantment sought in unison with the evergreen LaBrie who, heralding an unexpected vocal threat, stands as a singer of a sonic elegy equal to that of the unknowing lover who defies, overpowering it, the emotional execution squad swept from him by the unconscious union of his beloved. A sonic blemish in this sea is the lace of solos, capable of flowing back into a refrain equal to the initial one, predictable however in its Hollywoodian suggestion.

Sound choreographies that continue in their ethereal beauty, with dark Oriental nuances, in the next track, Outcry, despite the difficult basic metabolism. But the litany of appreciation is predictable: when the artistic linearity convinces despite the apparent complexity of its authors, then technical hyperbole is nothing more than a fungible accessory to glory.

Empyrean that, after the disbandment of La Brie's central piano interlude, flows into all its controversial beauty in the Leviathan of this ADTOE: "Breaking all illusions" a multiform sonic synecdoche adorned with expressive wonders introduced by a perfect neoclassical style. Here our heroes encapsulate, advancing it, a perfect synthesis of all that the Prog vocabulary has written in the last forty years; it is a vibrant leitmotiv with epic traits where sound harmonies grant perfection to the dialectic of the already said. Masterfully directing the binomial of technique-emotions, here even if it were needed to be reiterated, deus ex machina is the enchanted hand of Petrucci who, as Gilmour and Randy Rhoads of Diary of a Madman Post Litteram, impresses upon his solos and particularly on the final one, the immeasurable harmony of the sung reproducibility. Ad Maiora...?

And so this new sonic horizon, like the dreamlike farewell of an unforgettable set, disappears into the penumbra of a sweet acoustic litany where unexpectedly the musical protagonism is granted to the beautiful solo of what can be considered the hidden co-actor of this work; Jordan Rudess.

In conclusion, only reductive creativity could see this album as the work of rebirth. In reality, the sonic textures that adorn its grooves speak to how a simple adaptation possesses those magical qualities of revitalizing the linearity of what has already happened.

Because ultimately a tomorrow that deludes only disillusions the days it does not see... and both Petrucci and Portnoy know this well.