"The Root of All Evil" riff really isn't that headbangable. I think it works better as a really brooding, atmospheric sort of thing than anything, as LaBrie's vocals there do. Very dark track for them.

It's the same issue. People are allowed to call it good but not bad?

Regarding pure riffing I'd say ''Pull me Under'' fits. That song definitely shows Petrucci at his best. The studio version sometimes drags I think....but the 4~ minute version is just great. From the heavy intro riff to the crazy riff that goes all over to fretboard to the blazing solos in between...just great stuff. A shame the band never did much in that style again.

Well, for me the idea behind Dream Theater seemed kind of... pointless to me. By the time I had heard my frist dream theater song, I had already heard a lot more music that was really technical and a lot more music that was really progressive and different. DT makes a lot of compromises to find middle ground somewhere in the middle there and it sounds watered down and lame as a result.

Dream Theater are not so good at concealing their influences. I like certain bits of the band and have really come to particularly love and enjoy the albums Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence and Black Clouds And Silver Linings but they wear what they like on their sleeves;

Metallica
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4m9q9WP-N4
Rush
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG7r32tQTak
Muse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TheGJeZUf_U
and everything on the first album can be described as a USPM version of Kansas meets 80's Rush. And Kevin Moore's piece de resistance is the most obvious nod to Pink Floyd I have ever heard from a metal band. There's also Radiohead, U2 and Coldplay influences scattered on the Octavarium album but they have managed to develop the ambient, atmospheric bits of their sound since that album going forward and developed it into something that works for them quite perfectly. The Count Of Tuscany and most of the songs on A Dramatic Turn Of Events utilize it nicely.

That said, Dream Theater's problem isn't with James LaBrie or Jordan Rudess. It is with Petrucci. He needs to write more interesting riffs. He can play incredibly odd rhythms and melodies but we need some riffs. The chugging stuff isn't bad but if it's all you got, then it is.

I don't care if people call them good or bad, I care about people going way further than just saying they dislike them and actually trying to prove they're not a proper metal band or have no riffs, both of which are pretty high on the list of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen.

As for the "just chugging and no riffs", please explain to me then what a good riff is, because I've honestly never thought there is anything missing there. And I'm pretty sure there's far more to it than just chugging.

Ok, so... Reverse chronological order, one per each of the last six albums (as apparently that's when the riffs started being boring). From the top of my head, some riffs which are not "boring chugging"...
On The Backs of Angels, starting from 1:55
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oasnbzEMV08
The Count of Tuscany, starting from 3:57
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4yzYKIiV9Y
The Dark Eternal Night, the whole thing is a riff monster
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO3D_-xQFog
The Root of All Evil, from 1:03 onwards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgAc7ekYmVA
Stream of Consciousness, right after the intro
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIANchfl7Z8
And my personal favourite, The Test That Stumped Them All. Pretty much everything, but my favourite starts at 0:35. Yes, it does involve some palm-muted chugging, but... just the power and driving force of this thing speaks for itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3JO8awhZnA

If these still do not fit the almighty definition of decent metal riffs, I give up, I'm lost, sorry.

What are you talking about? Those belching noises, man, heavy as fuck!

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEELCH





Well since prog is under discussion...

Fates Warning - Exodus
Kingsbane - Lost in Time
King Diamond - At the Graves
Realm - The Brainchild
Elegy - The Grand Change
Dream Theater themselves, almost 30 years ago

Sometimes I wonder if Kevin Moore actually wrote many of the guitar riffs in early Dream Theater because of what happened to their riffwork when he left. Falling into Infinity had some good songs amidst the radio-oriented crap, but none of them ("Hell's Kitchen", "Lines in the Sand", "Trial of Tears") were really metal songs.

Come to think of it, maybe they should just recreate Falling into Infinity minus the overt commercial overtures. Just a whole album of mellow progressive rock. At this point it seems like only Mike Mangini actually gives a shit about metal anyway.

That is utter crap! I am a big John Arch fan as much as anybody but stop pretending as though he quit music for a while so he could hide out somewhere and refine his voice. The EP had only two songs for crying out loud and Sympathetic Resonance's music had been written by Jim Matheos and the band as what would probably be the next FW record but Ray Alder had Redemption and so that was put on hold. Sure when Arch came along, the direction changed and it became more epic but you can't imply he took all that time away to refine his voice because he cares that much about singing.

James LaBrie cannot be compared to John Arch because there's simply so much James has done over the years in terms of output that his vocals now bear the marks of age. Dream Theater still plays long sets and James sings much better these days because he has better control. On their last album, although he isn't screaming his head off he still brings tremendous energy to the fore. The chorus sections of Lost Not Forgotten and Bridges In The Sky are some clear examples.

Your reply is dumber. I was describing what I felt like when I was like 14 or 15 (yep pre-internet ). You may have been a musically omnivoric little shit at that age, but I was deifntiely about death and thrash. I guess you were all about Disturbed.

And first impressions are hard to change, especially when you can still see the same kind of DT fans. There is too much old and new amazingly progressive / forward thinking metal out there to waste time with this mediocre crap.

You got it wrong, it's the opposite. Arch stopped singing altogether and only a few months before every release he practiced his vocals. I'm sure after he left FW and did that audition (more of a Jam) with DT, he was done with music. So, what I said was that while LaBrie got ill and could damage his vocals from constant touring, Arch didn't sing a note for decades, being both situations hard to overcome. LaBrie got better from his illness and started to sing decently again, although he never recovered the high range he had on the past. Arch, being totally rusted vocally speaking, had little time to get back and after so many years it's hard as fuck to get back in such spectacular way, especially to sing stuff so challenging as he did/does.

People sometimes think that if you don't sing, your voice is not damaged or kept in good shape, which is completely false. He could got his vocals done with illness, work and lack of practice; to sing in the way he do it's completely necessary to be trained and also to keep singing in order to not lose range, power and the technique to project the vocals, to sing in tune (especially the stuff he sings, which is hard as fuck to do), to have your brain used to create such unique vocal lines, etc. I consider a miracle that John returned with his voice almost intact after so much time. The live clips fo Arch/Matheos are also quite good, especially for a guy who didn't put a feet in a stage in almost 30 years.

Nope, I am saying that it has been said that DT can pull off songs that are both complex and heavy/energetic, which they are not. True, they sound nothing like those bands I mentioned, because THOSE bands are complex and heavy, not them.

They are complex, and they can be heavy. Don't judge a band based on comparisons to other bands - or if you're going to, at least be smarter about it. For the record Octavarium is great as a mellow/laid back/mainstream take on their sound. I really like it actually.

Fuck you and the shitwagon you rode in on kind mister.
Being "deifntiely about death and thrash" kind of puts you in the same box as the DT fans you're criticizing who have apparently failed to move on so that point defeats itself. And yes, your post was really really dumb!

This is what you initially posted;


Dream Theater is appreciated by a wider range of fans, and as it turns out most of them actually know about Progressive rock and are fans of similar bands such as Porcupine Tree, Symphony X, Pain of Salvation and Fates Warning. They also attract older fans of Prog as well as folks who are more into jazz than metal. Your average DT fan will know more bout Rush than your average Deicide fan. So there.

And just to clear the air, my user name has nothing to do with the American band of the same name. Once upon a time, not that you should care, I played bass in a band here in Stourbridge that was called Disturbed so I do feel we were the original Disturbed hence my rather aggressive claim in my chosen name.

touche

Your post was really dumb, get over it!

So you were describing your feelings at 14 or 15 with the language you used back then? Because that block of text was very ill (and I don't quite mean that in a kind way) Oh and congratulations on being all about Death and Thrash at that age! Hopefully now that your tastes have mellowed and expanded somewhat you can be able to look beyond the trite and usual complaints everybody always has about Dream Theater (they shred too much, boring long songs, bad singer, too complex/not complex enough/not metal enough) and you might find something you like.

R.I.P Storm Thorgerson who is of course best known for his art with Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin (the awesome Houses Of The Holy art work) but actually also did cover art for Dream Theater's A Change of Seasons and Once In A LIVEtime.

Because they are a fun band to hate. It's easy to hate smug, self-indulgent musicians that are less known for their music and more known for their ability to play music.

Have you ever gotten into an argument with a Dream Theater fan? Most of them know NOTHING about Metal outside of Dream Theater and Iron Maiden and Metallica, they think that Dream Theater are the only people in the world that can play at that technical level, and they revere them with the same blind faith that you would find in an LDS member.

It's also fun to note, at least for me, their fans no nothing of music too. Seriously, I haven't met a fan that played an instrument.

I know a bunch musicians who are into this vapid shit. Including a guitar teacher (who isn't that great).

A lot of kids go into a phase where they're all about style over substance and Dream Theater is the kind of fix they need at that point in their progression as musicians. Fortunately, most of them grow out of it.

It's funny, you guys are being just as smug and condescending as the people that you're trying to criticize. Every band, and I mean every band, has their shit fans. Is it really fair to belittle everyone because of that?

They have a far greater proportion of pretentious and trite fans than any other band I've ever met with the exception of Opeth post Deliverance but to correlate, Opeth's fan base post Deliverance is almost exactly the same as Dream Theater. So no, we are not being as smug and condescending. We are pointing out, with certain accuracy an observable characteristic of their fan base. Of course every fan base has perfectly chill and non-assholey fans but the sheer number of air-headed, better than you mentality fans I've met that are Dream Theater fans can't be a simple coincidence. I honestly believe that Dream Theater's musical pseudotechnical false complexity - as has been mentioned elsewhere in this thready by multiple people - has a direct influence on the personalities of their die-hard listeners the same way that crack cocaine has a negative impact on those that overuse and overabuse that drug.

That was him? So I guess the naked little boy in A Change of Seasons isn't just a one-off thing. He's done that shit before.

And even aside from that, I think he's a pretty massively overrated artist. The Dark Side of the Moon art is a classic, but one piece is not enough to make you a great artist.



That shouldn't surprise you. Most music teachers are merely competent musicians, not expert. High school orchestra and band classes are often taught by formerly aspiring classical musicians who were rejected by orchestras, for instance.

That's not true. Have you ever met a Metallica fan you hated? Yeah, I don't think so.

I'm listening to Dream Theater's Majesty demos right now, and I'm noticing how little John Petrucci contributes to the metal parts of the music besides leads. His guitar style hasn't evolved that much besides the addition of a seventh string, mallcore shit tunings, and Pantera groove patterns that didn't exist in 1985, but he is mostly in the background while Myung, Portnoy, Moore, and even Chris Collins drive the actual music forwards, unless it gets to a non-metal section like an acoustic interlude. But now instead of Petrucci working with three musicians who are better songwriters than he is (one of whom, Kevin Moore, was an outright genius), two of those three have left and the third has been reduced to a passive wallflower, leaving no one to pick up the slack and leaving LaBrie with no decent material with which to make use of the vocal prowess he still has left.

John Petrucci is a prog rock guitarist stuck with a metal band. He really doesn't seem to know how to write metal, or even like metal all that much.

If I based my opinions on metal fanbase on this thread, believe me you'd end up far, far worse than your view of DT's fanbase - I'm pretty sure your generalising route is not the one you'd like to follow.


Seriously, "mallcore shit tunings" tells me everything that I need here, if you're going into complaining about seven strings and experimenting with lower tunings.

Also, congratulations, you've finally realised that DT's music has never been entirely guitar-driven and all the instruments have always had a lot to say, which I've said 20 times in this thread already. Now I'm not quite sure where have you got the idea that he's not a metal guitarists or even more, doesn't listen to metal, but I've tended to read things like "Portnoy drives the prog side of DT, Petrucci drives the metal side of DT" e.g. in their biography. But then, you probably know better.

I'd be nicer here if you hadn't repeated the same cliches over and over again and hadn't entirely ignored my post where I gave you a ton of post-2000 DT riffs that kind of break your "Petrucci can only write chugging riffs" argument.

TheLiberation, Woolie is kind of an expert on DT so I think with all due respect, he knows what the fuck he is talking about. Have you read his DT reviews? Obviously he doesn't feel the same about those albums as he probably did back then but they offer great insight on the trappings of this band until you sniff beneath the surface. I like bits of Dream Theater but we all have to admit that they tend to initially overwhelm until little by little you discover the faults that were there all along. Same thing with Iron Maiden, when you come to them they seem like the greatest thing in the world until you realize there is a whole world of metal out there...but where Maiden doesn't fail is their inherent simplicity that doesn't alienate. DT has been aiming for simplicity from the very start that sometimes their contrived simplicity just isn't quite genuine.

When Petrucci tries for instance to write a song driven by a riff in the style of Metallica/Megadeth he comes across as competent but somehow lesser than the bands he drew inspiration from. Where he adds his own signature is where things really work. I'll give you two examples; Constant Motion and Peruvian Skies. Although the former is groovy and heavy it is also so fucking derivative that even DT's signature drawn out instrumental breaks can't save it from the ...And Justice For All era from whence it was claimed. The latter on the other hand although also distinctly Metallican is graced by Petrucci's stylish guitar moments that switch from light to heavy with a mellowness Hetfield and bros. can never match. It is also more progressive in the traditional sense of the term than Constant Motion with its odd sigs and so on. In summary, it is a more identifiably Dream Theater song than the other which because it is so derived, lacks a unique stamp.

And you can't say John Petrucci "drives the metal side of DT". Just watch SCORE where they talk about their beginnings at Berklee. Petrucci admits that although he and Myung were into Rush and Maiden, it is Portnoy who got them into Metallica and all the heavier stuff. Portnoy was the one always with his leg into the metal world. Just compare most of the songs he wrote while still in the band-The Mirror, The Glass Prison, This Dying Soul, the aforementioned Constant Motion, The Test That Stumped Them All-with Petrucci's catalog which is mainly comprised of the mellower material. Portnoy is actually a big thrash fan and has also played for Overkill on stage as well drum duetted with Dave Lombardo. I remember seeing an episode of That Metal Show where he named the first Exodus lineup. Plus there's a cover of S.O.D's Anti-Procrastination Song on The Majesty Demos and we all know that couldn't have been Petrucci's idea.

I'm sorry, but if an "expert" keeps repeating the same, empty, superficial cliches posted by 10 people in this thread already, then it's not the kind of expert I can take seriously, sorry. I like your idea that DT is only "initially overwhelming", but apparently in my case that "initial" has lasted seven years already, and I still enjoy their entire discography very much, even though my music taste has hugely changed since I first listened to Octavarium back in 2006.

Is anyone even trying to pretend they don't have moments where their inspirations are clear? Everyone knows As I Am, Constant Motion and Peruvian Skies are heavily Metallica-influenced, you'd probably easily find Iron Maiden and Rush influenced songs as well. Nobody says otherwise, and in fact nobody except those that try to find every single detail that might somehow work against them cares.

Wait, wait, what. Are you actually saying that Mike Portnoy wrote these songs alone? I guess you're basing that on the fact that he wrote the lyrics to those, but if you had an idea about their writing process, with some very rare exceptions (Space-Dye Vest from Awake and Beneath The Surface from ADTOE only I think; maybe I forgot one or two), all of their songs are composed as a band, and I don't think any DT song ever (besides the aforementioned Space-Dye Vest) before ADTOE was written without the participation of both Petrucci and Portnoy. Please do your research before you come up with stuff like that.

It is probably true Portnoy was driving the heavier side (if you're all going to whine about "mallcore tunings" and "groove metal in riffs", he's the one you can complain to - he's openly been a fan of bands such as Slipknot or Disturbed for ages) in the later period, but you won't tell me it's gone. Have you even listened to A Dramatic Turn of Events? There's three songs on that album which are mellower, and they're the shortest on the album, the others all have their share of metal riffs. John Petrucci is now basically the leader of the band (he's the sole producer now and he's written 3/4 of the lyrics on the album), and yet somehow the album isn't any less heavier than the previous ones were. Try Lost Not Forgotten or Bridges in The Sky.

Great, this thread is still alive! *sighs*

TheLiberation, Mike Portnoy was such an integral part of Dream Theater so I don't understand why you're belittling his efforts. ADTOE everyone will agree is the least heavy record Dream Theater has made and it shows off more of their other aspects, their mellow side, their ambient and atmospheric qualities and their progressive identity. I feel it is a very mature record and I'm glad they don't feel they have to come all guns blazing with riffs since they suck at writing them anyway.

The songs you suggested have more going for them than heaviness.

Not to mention his involvement with Avenged Sevenfold. I agree with the notion of Portnoy being the most metal person who used to drive the band to more metallic direction but it's undeniable that he has developed a taste for mallcore oriented bands lately. If DT would've gone to the direction of Adrenaline Mob (best described as 'midlife crisis metal' ) then as a fan I would've facepalmed myself to coma.

Bullshit, I've gone in and out of lots of bands and still enjoy plenty of DT albums. I don't think anyone will say they're perfect, and while I'm sure you have your "street cred" pretty firmly established as I understand you were around back in the 80s and 90s...statements like this are just condescending crap.

Their fans "no"... ? Okay...

First, one doesn't need to play an instrument to be able to appreciate music. Second, the opinion of someone who plays an instrument is not automatically being elevetated above the opinion of someone who doesn't. Third, I take it you haven't met EVERY DT fan in the world, because, statistically, there are bound to be people who like DT AND play an instrument... so, your anecdotal evidence is totally worthless. Fourth, this argument is just a straw fire and has NOTHING to do with DT or the quality of their music per se, because you can't determine one band's quality by the general intelligence or abillities of the fans (or rather the three or four fans you know)...

Seriously, your two sentences above are fucking stupid. Borderline insulting, too... and I don't even like DT that much...

I did my research. Gee, you're so touchy!

Yes, Dream Theater compose as a band but I remember Mike Portnoy saying that when a member wrote the lyrics they directed the flow for that particular song and you can clearly see what he means because when you write the lyrics for a band like Dream Theater that wants to work on both a technical and emotional level, you want the words to evoke a certain kind of feeling and Mike's songs always had the more "metal" qualities of Dream Theater. Even James LaBrie who doesn't play an instrument in the band directed the way his songs turned out hence you have the music to Disappear-which by the way, is one of their finest songs-sounding melancholic and regretful to fit the mood of his lyrics. He does the same for Far From Heaven which completely forgoes guitars and drums (so yeah, I did listen to ADTOE) and you feel the music only works to support those words.

Portnoy,a self confessed OCD perfectionist, carefully built his 12 Steps Suite and most of the musical ideas for those songs were his. So although the band writes as a band, it turns out, someone always throws a direction. Heck, the Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence song (second disc of the album) is largely the work of Portnoy and Petrucci minus the "Overture" which was Rudess'.

What? I'm not belittling his efforts in any way, I've been kind of torn after he left because at the same time I've always appreciated him very much and I like his style very much, but then I can't say I can blame the band for anything, and ADTOE is a perfect proof they're still doing great.

I don't know who the fuck is that "everyone", but I have never ever seen an opinion it's their least heavy record. There are three more mellow songs on the album out of 9, which like I said are the shortest, all the others obviously do have calmer sections - that's normal for DT - but semi-quoting my new inspiration from the Reviews forum, "if these songs are DT's mellow side, my name is William Shakespeare".

Find me a single DT song that has nothing more going on to it than heaviness. Also, your post is seriously self-destructive if you're trying to defend DT here.


I'm not sure how I've managed to miss that gem, but that pretty much proves he knows fuck all about DT fanbase because a huge percentage of DT fans I've seen play an instrument and I don't think there are many bands with that high percentage of musicians (amateur or not) in their fanbase. Their technical side definitely contributes to that a lot, in my case it did sort of contribute as well (I started playing far later, but it was after I started listening to them I began looking into the technical side of music a bit more).


Then you worded your post in a very strange way because at the first glance it really looks like drowning in factual errors, sorry.

Still saying that he wrote these songs is a massive exaggeration, and even if the other band members did not say that much, John Petrucci has always been at the steering wheel sort of and had a lot to say about the music, even if a song was dominated by Mike Portnoy there's bound to be some JP input anyway. And anyway... John Petrucci has written something like 2/3 of the band's lyrics since the beginning. I'm pretty sure you'd find at least an equal amount of heavier songs he wrote the lyrics to. And again, ADTOE is somehow not any less heavy, without Mike Portnoy (I remember someone saying something about "Mike Mangini being the only one into metal in the band" here, so before that happens: he did not co-write any songs on this album.)

He built it in terms of the idea in concept, but it's very unlikely to say the least he wrote the whole thing alone in any possible meaning of the word. They write as a band, it's hard to single out any member to be responsible for anything in particular (besides the performances of their instruments), and the weird "John Petrucci isn't into metal" thing that has popped up now makes no sense whatsoever. I even remember his "albums of the year" and things like that, and while not all of it is going to be the idea of metal that's accepted around here, it was hardly composed of mellow albums.

Honestly, I have no idea how a guy that despises Nevermore so strongly for one-note chuggery can cite that song.

Well, considering your obvious fan-boy appreciation / defense of Dream Theater, my original statement rings true. They have a lot of fans that are total pretentious pricks. I guess birds of a flock flock together or whatever the fuck that statement goes.

You stole fizzy lifting drinks! You bumped into the ceiling which now has to be washed and sterilized so you GET NOTHING! YOU LOSE! GOOD DAY SIR!

Broad, idiotic generalisations like those uttered by Onionmetalhead make me wanna become a die hard DT fan just out of spite...

Do it. I'm just talking from experience. I have met like one or two people who are Dream Theater fans that I can actually have a regular conversation with.

Seriously, did a Dream Theater fan spit in your coffee or something? Your hatred of them is borderline fanatical, and that just seems silly to me. It's not like we're discussing Jugalos.