Dream Theater at Progfreak.com

Great performance - as always - but mediocre sound production.

Technical, metal POP!

While as usual, the playing is great and the production is pretty good, I was honestly severely disappointed with this album.
It just doesn't inspire me one bit. It just leaves me feeling really cold and unmoved.

The is Dream Theater's least progressive effort, and is mostly focused on heavy riffing more so than progressive metal that popularized them. They make excellent metal, but it won't appeal to more traditional prog fans.

Dream Theater's 2009 effort certainly doesn't disappoint. It mends some of their heaviest music with some great Rush influences and traces back to their early days. There isn't a bad song here, and this is one of the best 2009 albums.

This truly is the greatest album of all time. A concept album with a variety of moods, perfect execution, and not a single flaw on the entire album. This will probably be the only 10 I give out on this site, and with good reason. A perfect album by one of my favorite bands.

This is often regarded as one of Dream Theater's greatest albums. While I do love it, I would recommend Scenes From a Memory first. However, Learning to Live is a classic epic, and this is one of the first great prog metal albums. Highly Recommended!

The debut of Dream Theater. While musically interesting (perhaps the keyboards fill too much), the production is not very good (to 80s with reverb on virtually everything), and - of course - it's strange without LaBrie's vocals.

The legendary show that allegedly caused Mike Portnoy to pass out after it was over. Great performances across the board on this one.

One of the most overrated prog albums ive ever come across, and believe me, I was one of you fanboys who believe this is the greatest thing since sliced bread as well. But, that was a few dozen intense listens ago. These days, after owning this album for a few years, its faults really expose themselves to me. I'll make my point quick. Negatives: (you know the positives) 1. Labrie's whining vocals taint the entire album, he is not the godly vocalist he thinks he is, and overreaches his own abilities in in this album. (unlike Images and Words where he sings very well and knows his limitations.) 2. It is just too long! Cut out about 10 whole minutes of overly long intrumental jammage and you've got probably a much more condensed, and therefore better, album. 3. The lyrics are terrible, and the concept (after its novelty 'cool! a murder mystery!' storyline has faded) is almost laughable. "I felt so empty as I cried, like part of me had died."... eww. Please, did you have one of your kids write those lyrics on a napkin during school or something? But even with these quite major problems, it is still excellent to masterful in almost all other aspects. It's really a shame, without Labrie and with some self-control this could have been the masterpiece album that people actually think it is. Still VERY much worth a listen or two though, but don't expect to love it so much after the first few virgin encounters.

A milestone in progressive metal, and prog in general, for it's huge influence on the 90's prog revival. Barred by a dissapointing production (the snare sounds like it's filled with raw beans). Hugely influnced by Rush and the prog of the 70's, it deserves your repect if anything, but honestly, it should be heard at least once if you consider yourself a true progger.

While not a bad album by any stretch of the imagination, I feel it is Dream Theater's weakest effort. Only two tracks really stand out as fantastic.

A wonderful live album from their earlier years covering songs from Images and Words and their debut album.

A great progressive rock/metal concept album, easily Dream Theater's best work. The story is kind of stupid, but lyrically the album isn't bad. At times, it does drag a bit (it's over 75 minutes long), and sometimes the solos are a little tasteless, but overall it's a great album.

great story to a great cd lyrics and music fuse together to make something very different and amazing

Dream Theater are sharpening the metallic edge with "Systematic Chaos". I really like the hard edge on this album, which still retains the typical DT dynamics.

Good album. Lyrics are a bit a shame; John M should write again...but the music is very good. Highlights: Repentance, In The Presence Of Enemies Lowlights: The Dark Eternal Night

Dream theater definitely has the most powerful spot between the bands that took the progressive music to the 21st century. The band, that almost broke up after their 3rd album tour ("Awake"), and the constant pressure from the record company to produce hits, has made the musician pretty unstable. As a last minute move, they have turned to the company's management and demanded artistic freedom to their next project - and if this demand will not be fulfilled, they have threatend to end their career. The management have surrendered, and the band started the long & hard process of creating the album... Since then, "Scenes" became the most valuable album ever created by Dream, and most importantly - a perfect figure of Progressive Metal.

"Scenes From A Memory" is a complicated, ambitious rock-opera, 77 mins long. It was called as "Metropolis Part II". The first part, was in "Images & Words" - on track no. 5. But the ... -> show full review

Prog rockers Dream Theater tallied 16 years as a band with the release of Octavarium, but in listening you're apt to suspect otherwise. As a collective they remain as tight as they were on 2003's obsessively dark Train of Thought (like all music-school outfits, they've exacted an all-for-one formula that doesn't allow a single player more than his share of swagger), but a post-hardcore edge — call it a leap into 2005 — has invaded their pledge of allegiance to theatrical heavy rock. Hear it on "I Walk Beside You" and "The Answer Lies Within," both of which, at under five minutes, play like charming haikus from a band known for its epic poetry, and also on the orchestra-backed 20-plus-minute final cut, which skips around from Pink Floyd to Rush to Yes influences, stopping off every so often at a place fans of My Chemical Romance might find familiar. As with all the band's discs, guitars loom large and both doom and redemption seem no further than the next twisted verse. What's changed is Dream Theater's commitment to carrying on their reputation as underground progressive rock's classicists, and it seems well-timed.

My first taste of Dream Theater, and still stands out as the most solid of their albums. Starting with the perfectly paced build-up of the intro to "Pull Me Under", this contains some immaculate examples of musically interesting (prog, if you like) heavy rock. The instrumental interplay and restless changes of time and tempo are held together by a driving energy, and it never descends into wankiness. "Pull Me Under" and "Take the Time" hold the first half together in this way, the latter having some breathtaking rhythmic surprises. The longer pieces in the second half are no less imaginative, even if they might bore those without the patience for band instrumentals. "Learning To Live" is particularly colourful - a Spanish guitar sets off a rapid journey through several contrasting sections of soloing and group play, without ever getting bogged down.

Less interesting are the moments of plain big-hair stadium rock, such as "Another Day". "Surrounded" starts off in the same way, but contains just enough variety of mood and tempo to save it. The most successful "ballad" piece is keyboard player Kevin Moore's "Wait For Sleep", with a hypnotic, slinky piano theme.