Platekompaniet opened at midnight today to sell the new Coldplay album, and I exploited that to get a hand on Dream Theater‘s newest record, Octavarium, before most other people.
I’ll start with the experience I had when taking the subway home. I was with a friend of mine, so I couldn’t listen to it, and I wanted silence to do so. So we had a look at the cover art, which is amazing. This is Dream Theater’s eight studio album, and the cover plays around with that – spiders, musical octaves, squids. Wikipedia has some speculation on what the name means. According to drummer Mike Portnoy, this is a term that the band fell in love with over time, that they found on the Internet and started to investigate further upon. He also states that in that sense, it’s a concept album to designate that it’s their eight, but not a concept musically.
However, they’ve done a lot of work to make you hear what they’ve been inspired of. Pink Floyd, Muse, U2, System of a Down, et cetera. At many points these influences are very clear, but they still carry the Dream Theater signature. What’s cool about it is that a song, or parts of it, carry these influences, but they are not constant throughout the album. This makes for quite an interesting listening experience. Although their songs are long, they never get boring, at least not in my opinion. This is also one of their few albums without instrumentals, but the title track is 24 minutes long (exactly) and, obviously, covers a lot of instrumental ground. The rest of the album does not lack instrumental parts either. Less solos, but more intricate riffs.
Singer Kevin James LaBrie is the one who amazes me the most on this record. He goes through a lot of genres and types of singing, and never loses track of what he’s doing. He has been criticized for his voice earlier, but this is just fantastically awesome and really shows what he is capable of when he’s on top. His voice is what creates the biggest contrasts on this album and makes things interesting.
It’ll be interesting to see this live, which I’ll be doing in September when the band visits Oslo Spektrum.
But, by that, I don’t mean to say anything bad about the rest of the band in any way at all. Still, when you’d might have the feeling that LaBrie was more of a fill-in than anything earlier, this album makes him a more of a frontman than earlier. And the music is written, arranged and executed to perfection to fit that. You won’t miss musical virtousity, however.
Contrasting from progressivity, trash-heavy metal, a ballad with a string quartet, experiments with electronica, and half a symphony orchestra, this album takes you from the well-known Dream Theater virtousity, to sides of them which I’ve never heard. It features Mike Portnoy’s third song in the series about his alcoholism, steps six and seven of twelve – “The Root of All Evil”. You travel through the two preceding albums’ songs in the same series too, before you end up at the filmatic ballad “The Answer Lies Within”, truly a beautiful piece. Some might think it’s too cute, I think it’s awesome in a completely different way that Dream Theater always has been awesome – kind of like “Disappear” on Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. Also, someone might think it’s too “pop” – however, I think it’s amazing how this song, and the rest of the album, incorporates pop like music, sampling and non-DT instruments into the progressive scene. That’s REAL progressivity in my opinion. This shows in the next track as well. Further on to Octavarium, we go through heavier music, perhaps the most recognizable tracks as DT itself.
“Octavarium”, the twenty-four minute title track, is an epic piece that really stands for itself. For a second there you might think you’re listening to Pink Floyd, but the surprises never end. The contrasts are endless, and the incorporation of the orchestra – flute, strings and french horn – is absolutely terrific and gave me goosebumps many a time when listening through it the first time. Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci‘s music production skills really show on this track as well, and musically I hope that this is the direction the band takes in the future. I will probably be wrong, and when the next album comes, I’ll be happy I was. And if you’ve missed John Myung, you’ll discover that he is one of the foundations of making this epic soar through so many genres. Octavarium is also a very humoristic piece, which you’ll discover easily enough yourself.
This album goes into my Dream Theater classics collection. It ends up somewhere beside Scenes From a Memory, though in a different but unexplainable way. Given the great variation throughout the album, and a cover actually worth showing off, this should be a must-have for any musically interested being. Music is much about expectation and how to fulfill it or not – and the understanding of this that Dream Theater shows gives you many a surprise.
It’ll take a lot of listening before I uncover all the secrets and meanings to this album, but I’ll write about those when I get that far. There’s no top or bottom to this album – just downright amazing throughout.
Track listing:
- 1. The Root Of All Evil – 8:25
- 2. The Answer Lies Within – 5:33
- 3. These Walls – 7:36
- 4. I Walk Beside You – 4:29
- 5. Panic Attack – 8.13
- 6. Never Enough – 6:46
- 7. Sacrificed Sons – 10:42
- 8. Octavarium – 24:00