Dream Theater
Awake

THE REVIEW

Get ready to enter the atmosphere of the theater of dreams, to listen to that sweet "awakening" that Dream Theater offered as their third album in 1994. It is certainly not the best that these five musicians have produced during their career as there are boring songs, but others are nothing short of spectacular. I find it appropriate to analyze all the tracks.

The first three were not entirely to my liking, starting with 6:00 which opens with Portnoy's flourish and closes with a guitar solo. It's heavy with LaBrie singing angrily, and the same goes for Caught. In A Web, although the chorus is calmer. With Innocence Faded, the waters calm and LaBrie's voice returns to normal, and at some points, it really soars! Now begins the beauty of the album with the great triad A Mind Beside Itself. Erotomania is an instrumental piece that's a bit boring at the start, but from about the second and a half minute, it becomes beautiful, with references to Silent Man and Caught In A Web. Petrucci plays on a piece that sounds very much like classical fugue, then returns to being dull to end with a nice bass loop. Voices; a song alternating between calm and heavy parts, not very beautiful from a melodic point of view but what really “thrills” me about this song is Petrucci's solo towards the end, it's the most beautiful solo on the CD or I would dare say the most beautiful he has composed. It's a hair-raising solo, imagine that in the final part there are even 48ths! The lyrics seemed a bit distressing to me. And here we finally arrive at the legendary The Silent Man, a very moving track. This ballad created by Petrucci is one of the most beautiful by DT. Especially engaging in the chorus. It continues with The Mirror; a song with a heavy rhythm, a bit boring, the next track, Lie, is still heavy, similar to The Mirror (some flourishes from Petrucci here and there on several occasions). The ninth track Lifting Shadows Off A Dream is another beautiful ballad. The third time the chorus is repeated (well filled with instruments), it gives you a scary goosebumps! Rather poetic the text written by Myung. Scarred, a bit like Voices, alternates light and heavy parts, by itself it's boring particularly the ending. Various solos cannot be missed and this time there's also Moore. The CD closes with Space Dye Vest, a sad, distressing but still very beautiful song with the piano as the main instrument. Kevin Moore really poured his soul into creating it.

Awake is certainly not a CD to listen to every day but tracks 4-6-9 and 11 deserve a lot. It is not even the highest technical album from Dream Theater as the "Keyboard solos" are almost absent, why doesn't Moore feel like showing off??!! Petrucci is perhaps the most in-form member of the band. I took a general look at the lyrics and they seem well written to me. The rating would be halfway between 3 and 4, but since half points can't be given and since Dream Theater is Dream Theater my rating is 4. Sorry if there were already two other reviews of Awake on the site but I've owned this CD for quite some time and also it seemed simple enough to comment on to debut as a reviewer…