BEDN Day 3- Continuing Yesterday's Dream Theater Blog...

I know you're probably thinking that im about to do something very boring but I want to talk about the opposite side of Dream Theater that I talked about yesterday. On the surface, Dream Theater seems like a fast heavy metal band but that's probably not even the majority of their music. It 50% of their music at it's very most but it's probably lower than that.

Dream Theater has a soft side where they show talents other than fast and technical. Their first few albums while sounding a bit more 80's hair metal-ish actually convey a LOT more emotion and mood than you would think of coming from a band that plays the music that I showed in yesterday's blog.

Dream Theater believes that nothing should be holding them back in their music. They keep this in mind and never play anything strictly because it sounds like something "their genre" would play.

The best way to describe my points is to sample more videos. At least this is more of a watching/listening blog that reading just like yetsterday :)

Please excuse some of the cheesiness this video may give off. This is the first slow song on technically their first album that was released very early 90's and still had an 80's power ballad influence. I used to HATE this song when I heard it but there are MANY things about it that I really like now that I took the time to appreciate the musicianship of everything.



Here is a FANTASTIC song off their newest (10th) album "Black Clouds and Silver Linings". The song is about writer's block:

Here is a heavier yet still very slow and chill song. This song comes from their 9th album, Systematic Chaos, which has a futuristic type theme. This is one of the songs that most newcomers to Dream Theater will not enjoy. You have to get used to Dream Theater's singer. At first I hated the crap out of him, but after a while you start to accept him and then realize how talented he is and suddenly cant picture this music with any other vocalist.

So ALL of their songs arent insanely long. I think I probably exaggerated a bit yesterday when I mentioned the length. Most of their newer stuff IS quite long thought but you can quickly adapt to the songs because the cinematic type experience of the music carries you through the songs. This song is a good mixture of slow jam with a few heavier riffs in it (which start to pick up at around 2:45). The mood of this song is very awesome. This is one of my top 5 favorite Dream Theater songs. This song is a very good example of the kind of adventuristic side of Dream Theater's style:

Here's a slow yet very happy type of song with some great piano work:

If you watched that video that I posted on yesterday's blog about Liquid Tension experiment, this is a little more that kind of style. This is one of my top 3 favorite Dream Theater songs. Around 1:40 it starts to get this 90's club feel to it. Ignore the keyboard player moving around weird. He's a different guy that was only on one of their albums. This was off their 4th's album, Falling Into Infinity. The whole album has a Pink Floyd kind of feel to it which REALLY stands out in the solo that starts at 4:25.

This last song here is another one of my top 3 Dream Theater songs. It's from their second album, Images and Words, which many think of as their debut album because their true first album was really bad and has a different singer that gave the band a terrible overly done 80's sound. The vocals are very impressive in this song. Also, if you love 80's videos in the first place, you will enjoy this:

So I hope that you can now see the two kinds of Dream Theater. This blog is more about their roots and more meaningful type of music (even though most of it is very thoughtful and intelligent). I thought I would lay out their complete story so as not to give the wrong impression of them because I thought differently of them when I first listened to them as well.