Dream Theater
Greatest Hits (...and 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs)

NO, ABSOLUTELY NO, THEY REALLY SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE THIS TO ME

A Greatest Hits of Dream Theater is as useful as a collection of house remixes of Gorgoroth. Why? Because Dream Theater's masterpieces are often maxi suites like "A Change Of Seasons", "Octavarium" and "In The Presence Of The Enemies", and fitting all of them would require a five-disc CD. If you then add that the said collection has a truly horrific title and a tracklist that seems to have been chosen with bingo numbers, this double album can be considered the first real misstep in the career of Petrucci & co..

But let's get into the details: the collection consists of 2 CDs: "The Dark Side" for the heavier tracks and "The Light Side" for the ballads. There are no songs from the first album (and "Only A Matter Of Time" and "The Killing Hand" would have deserved to appear much more than "I Walk Beside You" or the boring "Lifting Shadows Of A Dream") and not even from Systematic Chaos, consequently excluding masterpieces like "Prophets Of War", "Constant Motion" or "Forsaken". Additionally, some songs like "Home" or "Misunderstood" were horribly shortened and mutilated, thus killing the magic of the progressive metal characteristic of the Boston band. As if that weren't enough, there are also excellent "omissions": "Space Dye-Vest", "Metropolis Pt.1", "Surrounded", "Vacant", "Caught In A Web", "Take Away My Pain"... and the list could go on indefinitely. Another demerit is the fact that "The Test That Stumped Them All" and "Solitary Shell" have been included, which are two parts of a 42-minute piece a bit like if Pink Floyd decided to include only this or that part of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" or "Echoes" in a greatest hits, I imagine any PF fan would go straight to sue Waters and Gilmour for the desecration of a work of art.

Conclusion: this album is a real joke and absolutely does not deserve the purchase, not even if you are newbies to Dream Theater. As for you, Petrucci, Portnoy & Co, you have really disappointed me this time: now seriously get to work and woe betide if I don't see the follow-up to "Systematic Chaos" by the end of 2009!