January 2020 Feature Release - The Infinite Edition
The start of the New Year is upon us which of course means that we'll be nominating a brand new monthly feature release for each clan. This essentially means that we're asking you to rate, review & discuss our chosen features for no other reason than because we enjoy the process & banter. Ben & I will certainly be contributing & we look forward to hearing your thoughts too.
This month's feature release for The Infinite is 1992's classic sophomore album from legendary US progressive metallers Dream Theat entitled "Images & Words." This album saw the band replacing their front man & taking their already impressive musicianship to all new heights resulting in worldwide acclaim. We're keen to hear your thoughts on it.
I already did my review on its album page, but I'll just write a small summary here.
Images and Words was my favorite progressive metal album in my earlier epic metal taste. It is absolutely perfect with never any failure to deliver. The impeccable music of this album shines far more than most of the other Dream Theater albums. It has everything including emotional vocals that range from mid to high, powerful guitar with amazing soloing, top-notch bass lines, awesome drum power, and epic keyboard synths. The songs range from beautiful balladry to progressive madness. Almost no subsequent work from Dream Theater or any other band can knock this album off its throne. You can never overthrow these Images and Words. This album shall keep its awesome reign!
Dream Theater's Images and Words is a monumental album that put this group on the map. Perhaps a little too well.
While this album has aged incredibly well, its influence can be heard on numerous progressive metal albums today. You can still hear its influence on Dream Theater albums today! And I do view that as a problem. As a band who were so innovative and pushing boundaries as to where metal could go, to see them lock into a formula in recent years is disheartening.
Talking about this album, it does sound like the band dipping their feet in the water to see if anything will bite, before making the full dive later on. "The Miracle and the Sleeper" is easily my favourite moment on the album, with its free form composition, which was unconventional for metal at the time, and how it planted the seed that would influence the bands superior albums, Scenes From a Memory and Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence.
This is still a great album, but one that has dampened on me over the years. I can appreciate the musicianship on display as well as what the band was able to accomplish, but it just.... loses its grandeur when you have heard it so many times.
8/10
Put up a review on the album page, but it was a pleasure going back and actually checking out old Dream Theater, which was surprisingly something I never did. Everything you would want from Dream Theater is here, and if it would have been ten years ago I would have given this album an easy 5/5.
However, like I said in my review, my concept of what is impressive and awesome changes over time as I've listened to more and more things. What was incredibly impressive to me ten years ago is no longer nearly as impressive now that I've listened to more Progressive Metal bands. So while Images and Words is still a very solid album it's flaws are much more apparent to me, especially since Dream Theater was the first band to really let me down in terms of their modern releases.