Dream Theater
A Dramatic Turn Of Events

Let's make one thing clear right away: "A Dramatic Turn Of Events" represents, within the metal community, a historic album: it's the first one without the presence of Mike Portnoy, the father-master of Dream Theater even before it opened in the distant 1989.

Sometimes there's talk of digs directed at former band members: venomous bites inflicted by the band in question on the black sheep that has been (or was) distanced from the fold. In this case, however, instead of an arrow dart we can safely talk about a cannon blast. Just look at the cover of the record under study: a clown, showing off to the max (in the sky, on an endless rope), ready to fall into the void and take a hefty blow (the rope is breaking), while Dream Theater (the logo on the airplane) continues to tour the world, carrying on as if nothing has happened. The meaning is clear, direct, and precise. In a word? Scathing.

Portnoy had by now become a big weight (and not just metaphorically speaking) in the musical economy of the band: he decided what to play, he decided what to sing (?), he had turned his creation into a cover band (the bands from which D.T. "drew" in recent years were chosen by good old Iron Mike). Practically, in a few words, the rule was "I command, you obey." For many fans, already discouraged by previous records, the closing of the curtain on the New York band loomed. But, as Thomas Mann said, adversities can be formidable opportunities. Never more fitting words.

Now let's make another thing clear: "A Dramatic Turn Of Events" is the best album written by Dream Theater in many (and many) years. Have the flaws found in the last releases been entirely removed? No, but here we can talk about small smudges, artist mistakes due more to a hurried hand than to the glaring perspective errors of the past, which in the whole work do not tarnish its quality too much.

Forget the many "references" (to put it mildly) to other bands contained in "Octavarium" and "Systematic Chaos." Forget the songs made of glued riffs and musical snippets, in the true sense of the word, inside each other in the same piece without real harmonic sense, as happened in "Black Clouds and the Silver Linings," leaving the tracks like a completed puzzle where the pieces were randomly joined by the hand of a too lazy creator.

The first appetizer of the album, "On the Backs of Angels," was a tasty snack, but it left a strange aftertaste due to a somewhat lazy James LaBrie in the vocal phase. Once you've listened to the record, you realize that the first impression is often the truest: a snack; but the main course is of a quite different caliber.

LaBrie, finally free to sing more melodic and voice-suited pieces, delivers a performance not heard in years. Listen to him on "Beneath the Surface," the concluding gem of this collection of songs, which is set to replace "The Spirit Carries On" as the ballad in the group's live shows.

What is primarily found in the album is a slimmer structure of the songs, where the famous instrumental progressions so loved (and hated) are significantly reduced. And this only makes the whole thing less heavy, compared to what happened in the past. All tracks, even those with harder sounds, maintain a well-defined melodic style, "airy," where the choruses sung by LaBrie succeed in hitting the mark effortlessly. Listening to the melodic bursts of "Outcry" and "Build Me Up, Break Me Down" is believing. Speaking of individual members, the presence of Myung is noted, as never (almost) before. Jordan Rudess deserves special mention. Evidently, he has learned Steven Wilson's lesson, at least in part. Invited by the hyper-creative English sprite during the production of his first solo record ("Insurgentes"), he astonished the bald keyboardist by asking him to play in a certain way. That is? Using few notes, which give the songs a boost and do not bog them down with heavy, often useless, baroque embellishments. In the record, Jordan relies heavily on now symphonic sounds, which make the whole more melodic and easy to assimilate, now on highly effective piano parts, as in the case of the solo on the album's single, or in "Far from Heaven." His interventions in "This Is the Life," another pearl of the album, and in the already mentioned "Beneath the Surface" are splendid, where emotions reach their peak in the intersection between voice, gentle guitar, keyboards, and a string crescendo that ties a knot in the throat.

Yes, the guitar. And Petrucci, someone will say? Good John proves what was already known: he is an excellent guitarist, where this time taste is preferred over technique. His touch in "This Is the Life," as well as in "Breaking All Illusions," is remarkable, already loved and revered by the quintet's followers. Mangini, on the other hand, offers an almost timid performance, but it was known: when you step onto such an important stage for the first time, it's normal for your legs to tremble a little.

Ultimately, we are faced with an excellent album. One wonders what would have come out if more time had been taken, but with "if's" great records are always made. For fans, the album will be like a breath of fresh air taken in a mountain village, after breathing the smog of a chaotic and noisy metropolis(s) for a few years. Dream Theater are these: a combination of melodic metal and ballads, made for those who love them and who have, in some way, found something in them that has touched them deeply, so much so as to invest time, money, and much love in them. There's no use searching for too many intellectual meanings.

An album on target, a real surprise, where finally Dream Theater return to make their mark, simply with the right notes in the right place which, no matter how many years one may spend studying music and their instrument, remain strangely the most difficult to play.