DREAM THEATER — A Dramatic Turn of Events (review)

DREAM THEATER — A Dramatic Turn of Events album cover Album · 2011 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Stephen
Dream Theater's first album with Mike Mangini and without the founding member, Mike Portnoy, shows a return to their classic roots, especially 'Image and Words' era and combined with what they've done in the last four albums. I found them slowly trapped in monotonous circle after the highly acclaimed 'Scenes From A Memory' but this is a dramatic turnaround for them and suddenly Dream Theater became an interesting entity again for me to explore further.

'On The Backs of Angels', the first single is a good track but not the best here. A dynamic tempo with mostly in mid-paced, Rudess got more portion with his keyboard, and I saw it as a less-metal-more-progrock track. 'Build Me Up, Break Me Down' has a modern flavor verse and the center point of this song is brilliantly melodic. 'Lost Not Forgotten' hihglight is the complex guitar/keyboard duel, the instrumental show is magnificent but kinda lack of memorable hooks. 'Bridges in The Sky' has an ultra-weird intro and freaky choir, sounds very old school with massive galloping rhythm, but it's a decent track overall.

'This Is The Life' is a beautiful small piece of piano ballad, I love this one, and also the other ballads here, 'Far From Heaven' and 'Beneath The Surface'. Although it's totally unusual for a prog metal band to introduce 30% ballads in their album but perhaps they think it's necessary to opt for a safer path to reach an even wider audience, especially the first time without Portnoy.

The second best song of this album is 'Outcry', a complex verse with chugging rhythm, the tempo is slowing down in the middle and they put up some Middle-Eastern passage, a great prog metal tune, but the true champion of this album is 'Breaking All Illusions'. Started with a spectacular intro, this long track is a melodic epic, pay attention to the battle of heavy riffs and killer keyboards before it slows down with some bluesy feel, what a song!

I still think the Portnoy saga is a big Dream Theater conspiracy to revive their dying image and reclaim the prog-metal throne before the original Portnoy came back to the fold in 3-4 years, but I might be wrong though. Whether that's a true prediction or not, 'A Dramatic Turn of Events' is still a pleasant album by the band, not enough to beat the classic 90s era, but I haven't been this excited with this band since 'SFaM', so that's a great sign.
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