Dream Theater
Distance Over Time

Retreating to an old barn converted into a recording studio between writing, rehearsals, and barbecues. That’s how the fourteenth work of the most loved and hated band in the world was born. It might seem strange, but this “Distance over Time” (the first release under the prog label par excellence Inside Out) is surprisingly bringing together even those purist and demanding Dream Theater fans who are always ready to criticize the band when they don’t produce an album to their liking. Let’s try to understand why.

Let’s say it without hesitation, “The Astonishing” wasn’t understood! Personally, I think the words “understand” and “appreciate” go hand in hand; if you don’t understand, you don’t appreciate. What wasn’t understood about “The Astonishing” was probably the desire to do something profoundly different and pretentious, to go beyond the beyond; and in art, especially in prog, you need to know how to exaggerate and go beyond, but many don’t understand that.

Dream Theater has always felt free to do what they want, but they’ve always had this kind of goal of staying partially true to those characteristics (as Portnoy once said in the “Live at Budokan” extras), perhaps it was this excessive departure from their compositional habits that pushed them to rediscover their progressive metal soul. Indeed, the last two albums were quite far from the genre they themselves had created in its definitive form and the classic sense we all know (Fates Warning & co. were just anticipators); the self-titled album of 2013 was essentially a hard progressive album that winked at Rush in several instances, “The Astonishing” was even softer, a work of symphonic and orchestral rock. In light of this, you could almost read in the band’s thoughts the desire to rediscover their origins and something decidedly tougher.

Let’s not expect a return to their origins’ sound as the band hoped for, it’s certainly not an early ‘90s vibe you feel in the album. Instead, the sound is hard and sharp, yes, I emphasize the word “sharp,” it seems the most fitting. The band had announced it, and these are words that certainly scare many fans of the more progressive fringe; the fear is always of a new “Train of Thought” that is too thrash-oriented but also of an album that’s too over-the-top like “Systematic Chaos” or too forcibly dark metal like “Black Clouds and Silver Linings,” an album that’s too Portnoyian. None of this is “Distance over Time,” here Dream Theater offers a sound that is very metallic but without trying to play the role of metalheads, often a critique directed at the recent Dream Theater during the Portnoy era. Even the sharpest of riffs here seem well placed in a very balanced context that doses and balances aggression, melody, and virtuosity very well.

And if it’s not a new “Images and Words,” then what is “Distance over Time?” Well, personally, it seems more or less a cross between a “Black Clouds and Silver Linings” (yes, there is indeed a bit of Black Clouds to it) and “A Dramatic Turn of Events.” The comparison with the first is spontaneous because there is a tendency to want to package a product that is generally very hard but maintains the progressive imprint, as well as preference for the back and forth solos between Petrucci and Rudess and the unisons between the two to real instrumental parts; yes, here Jordan Rudess indeed doesn’t give much room to his famous “tricks,” probably everyone got tired of them, and someone pointed that out to him, or simply, they also spontaneously tired him a bit; in fact, here, trying to renew himself just enough, he offers with massive frequency organ inserts not quite on the order of the day, as well as a frequent resort to piano parts; in some videos from the recording sessions, a small organ can be seen (seems to be a reproduction of the old Hammond) in his setup, his solos in “Untethered Angel” and “Fall into the Light” are extraordinary, in a sense, a surprise; a slightly vintage Rudess, slightly more “classic rock” but perfectly fitting in the sharp prog-metal context it fits into. But while in Black Clouds (which I loved anyway) there was that feeling of excessive and “forced” where forced was the attempt to sound very badass and forced were the solo duels, here, everything seems more spontaneous and natural; even the longest and most intense solos seem to have far more naturalness, creativity, and smoothness; thus, the comparison with Dramatic becomes necessary also due to greater compositional inspiration; with the 2011 album “Distance over Time” also shares the strong melodic component, the powerful openings that a big Dream Theater fan always wants to hear.

Yet despite a fairly traditional prog-metal matrix, the album has its variety that makes the tracks all more or less different from each other; some have a more traditional structure, others less so, some focus more on one element and others on another, but the keyword remains the same, the sense of balance between elements remains constant.

The two more articulated and structured tracks are fairly predictably (because it’s not always the case in prog) the two longest, “At Wit’s End” and “Pale Blue Dot”; two tracks made to please the more traditionalist progmetaller, the first is lively in the first part and then gives more space to the melody in the second, where John Petrucci’s long and melodic solo wants to once again demolish the cliché that “Petrucci has no soul” (now a scapegoat to discredit Dream Theater), the second presents the best possible instrumental interweavings, the most imaginative and unpredictable; these are the two tracks where all the elements are the most equivalent. The opener “Untethered Angel” is not far behind either, with its dark mood, solo duels, and very Opethian intro, it sounds very much like Black Clouds, it almost seems like an outtake, so much so that when the single was released, we all spoke of it as a “bland track,” that doesn’t drive you crazy and is just a single; within the context, however, it proves to be perfectly apt, it seems placed there specifically to provide a calling card for the album, already there you feel the sense of balance, dynamism, and compactness.

More focused on instrumental virtuosity is “S2N,” a frenetic track where Myung and Mangini take the stage, literally massacring their instruments to create an incredible whirlwind that drags the listener, a sort of more metallic and sharp Rush, probably the surprise track of the album.

“Fall into the Light” is instead the most metal-oriented track of the lot, the one where the metal element is foregrounded, dominated by pounding riffs and a tight rhythm, a rip-off of Metallica, the umpteenth in their career but probably the most successful and enjoyable, probably because even here you feel a sense of balance and naturalness; it’s not a “Constant Motion” that falls into tackiness nor an “As I Am” that makes Dream Theater seem like a fully-fledged thrash metal band, here Dream Theater plays the metalheads but without making you forget who they are, managing to still package a fully prog-metal track with high melodic content; there are not only bright openings in the chorus, not only are there organ strikes to lighten and soften the guitar riffs, not only is there a section with typical guitar-keyboard interweavings of their style, there is above all a long slow central part, with cleaner and clearer arpeggios than ever, stuff that hasn’t been heard since the intro of “A Change of Seasons,” not to mention another noteworthy melodic solo filled with feeling from Petrucci. Here, too, we all remained a bit surprised!

However, as a counterpart, there’s also the track that focuses on melody by sacrificing aggression, “Barstool Warrior” is a very successful melodic prog-rock track, which seems to have forcefully won over the fans’ hearts. To be fair, it’s not something “strange” or “unusual,” Dream Theater has almost always included at least one track that’s less hard than the others (or with fewer metal inserts) and better labeled as prog-rock, think of “Surrounded,” “Learning to Live,” “Innocence Faded,” “Voices,” “Finally Free,” “Breaking All Illusions”; Dream Theater also has a prog-rock soul, and it works rather well, they’ve also demonstrated that by making softer albums like “Falling into Infinity,” “Octavarium,” or the two prior to this. Actually, “Barstool Warrior” begins energetically, almost as if it wants to deceive the listener into expecting a track full of ephemeral virtuosity when the plan behind it is quite different, it’s more or less what happened in “The Bottom Line” by Spock’s Beard, which started with an unusual hard rock then transformed into an emotional ballad with acoustic traits, my mind instantly went there; but when after the first minute melody takes over, no one can compete, we have the most tear-jerking and emotional Petrucci, his melodic phrasing, and in general the melodic framework of the song (well supported by Rudess’s piano) reaches truly excellent levels, once again, we must concede the truth that Dream Theater indeed has soul; and it’s a melodic track in their best tradition, maintaining a certain balance and good instrumental dynamism here too; in the last decade, someone might have complained about the excessive lengthening and undue prolixity in which some attempts to make a “soft” track fell, like in “Repentance,” “The Ministry of Lost Souls,” or “The Best of Times,” I don’t think the same can be said of “Barstool Warrior.”

Yet despite the absence of a certain Portnoy, the penchant for a flashy, commercially metal-oriented track sometimes escapes, here comes “Room 137,” a blatantly flashy track, for moshing at concerts or a boxing match; it might not be the most inspired track, it aims to be fundamentally direct and perhaps gets a bit lost, but there’s something to differentiate it even here, consider the almost jazz-like accompaniment by Rudess under the guitar solo, almost giving an elegant touch to an otherwise decidedly raw track, as well as the classically prog synth passages in the second verse or the brief part of hard rock organ preceding it; doing flashy has been more successful than other times, they managed to do it without really falling into the flamboyant. However, the most blatantly commercial track is “Paralyzed,” more strictly set to a certain song form, but this time we must talk about a rather disappointing track, it has a rather dull, cold melody, it really seems like a track composed in a moment of exhaustion, it has the intensity of an ordinary b-side; structurally similar to “Forsaken” and “You Not Me,” it doesn’t reach the power and melodic brilliance of the first nor the pop-rock innocence of the second (both unjustly vilified tracks), yet it has that energetic nu-metal/alternative riff led by hammering guitar and bass that strongly recalls KoЯn.

Also rather disappointing is the only ballad on the album, “Out of Reach.” Usually, we can find two or three per album, but after the excessive presence of symphonic ballads in the previous album, it was almost obvious to limit it to just one here; but this fails to be intense and impact like they’ve done in the past, and LaBrie’s voice sounds almost annoyingly feminine here; in the end, I don’t skip anything, nothing is thrown away with Dream Theater after all, they’re certainly not two trap or reggaeton tracks, but these last two tracks mentioned could have been easily avoided.

Now, an overview of the performance of the individuals. Nothing to add on the divine John Petrucci, we’ve already spoken of Jordan Rudess, but it’s John Myung and Mike Mangini who take center stage, the same ones who shone two albums ago, in the 2013 self-titled album, and instead fell a bit into obscurity in the massive 2016 concept; we’ve always been confident in the first’s technical skills, less so about his incisiveness, how many times has the musical-satirical Facebook page “Giovanni All’Heavy” (which often makes satire about bassists and their being considered second-tier musicians) playfully mocked him saying that when he plays “you can’t hear a damn thing”... well, I don’t think it can say the same about his incisiveness on “Distance over Time,” perhaps his best work on bass ever, comparable to the self-titled album but back then he seemed a bit too much in the shoes of Geddy Lee, while here it’s all Myung; Mangini confirms himself as a monster of technique and unpredictability in delivering hits, exactly as in 2013, but here he’s also supported by a production that highlights him, without that too muffled sound he had before; there are always contrasting opinions between Mangini’s supporters and Portnoy’s nostalgics, those who praise the first’s technical monstrosity and those who praise the second’s greater sentiment, those who accuse the first of being a soulless machine and those who instead criticize the second of having technical limitations, with periods alternating between heralding the first and longing for the second; perhaps both statements are true, but I wonder if Portnoy would have been able to do what you hear in “S2N”... On the contrary, James LaBrie disappoints, after the varied and convincing performance offered in “The Astonishing,” here he doesn’t make an impact, he seems a bit drained, he limits himself to the basics, besides, his recent live performances also indicate several execution difficulties; a vocalist on the road to decline?

Reaching the conclusion, I say... great progressive metal album, great balance between various elements, halfway between classicism and modernity, with some notable insights but without a great desire to dare too much (although, well, if we seek the willingness to dare, it’s better to turn to Haken), I too applaud in the end the incredible sense of completeness the album presents, but I preferred the total atypicality of “The Astonishing,” they had taken a path that could indicate a new way, now instead here’s the return to their own footsteps, satisfying a little everyone, but I wonder if there really was a need for yet another classic prog-metal demonstration, as if we didn’t already know they do it best...

In the end, the reason for Dream Theater’s critical redemption lies right here, in the fact that it’s a very Dream Theater album; I’ve been following the comments on them for about 13 years, and what I’ve noticed is exactly this: when they attempt new paths, they receive several jabs, then return to receiving praise when they return to their more canonical sound, which had already happened with “A Dramatic Turn of Events.” Another winning weapon could have been its unusually more contained duration, how many times have we read comments accusing Dream Theater of excessively and unnecessarily extending their albums, here instead they manage to be more essential and concentrate everything in a more contained length, only three tracks exceed 7 minutes, none reaches 10, total duration about 56 minutes, the second shortest album in their discography after the debut “When Dream and Day Unite,” it doesn’t even reach 57 of “Images and Words,” 60 is only touched by adding the bonus track “Viper King,” a metallic hard rock track made of roaring guitars and a powerful organ, quite unusual for Dream Theater, and I would have put it easily in place of “Paralyzed,” perhaps relegating the latter to a bonus. But these are all considerations, interesting to make but they remain there in the bar of music lovers and certainly don’t enter the album, which nonetheless gives us a good hour of high-level music as they know how to offer.