Topic: Help me get into Dream Theater

Should I start with Awake or Metropolis for a Dream Part 2?

Not a fan of Labrie's voice,so it has to make a strong impression on me for me to continue... I like A Chaghe of Seasons, but I hated Images and Words.

ehh i tried Awake. good production, but it's too long. started off fine, but quickly became a slog... onto Metropolis part ii... it's got a lower dynamic range, but it should be okay.

I honestly don't know what to recommend, there are so many things that turn you off.

yeah, i tried it. I really wanted to like it, but Dream Theater just isn't for me. Liquid Tension Experiment on the other hand takes all the potential that DT has and seems to dilute it into a much more focused, interesting, and refined package for me. I'll stick with them.

I like John Petrucci as a guitarist and Jordan Rudess as a keyboardist, and Mike Portnoy as a drummer (hey ig that's just LTE, isn't it?) but the band just isn't as good as the sum of their parts for me, it's seems. Songwriting drags, and I just can't get past the vocals.

but hey, somehow A Change of Seasons seems to have worked for me, so there's that.

I'll go with Six Degrees. Look at the two discs as two distinct albums. Start with the second disc :)

Definitely a frustrating band if that's the right word. I do think Metropolis Pt2 was a masterpiece, and agree a Change of Seasons is great too, but beyond that nothing has ever shown consistency, it's always a handful of great tracks and a whole lot of filler. And yes Labrie's vocals quickly change from tolerable to dreadful, with their live albums even more of a roulette in that regard.

Slowly working through some of those with the best so far being the 20th anniversary tour. Everything gets better with a full orchestra, and as Mike hinted at the suite on Six Degrees is pretty great already and gets the full treatment there.

An E-tier rating for Scenes ... well, if you have to do it then by all means have at it, it's a free world. It will probably be useful to ten other people on the planet :-)

Without differences of opinion, things would be very boring :-)

i mean yeah, when the band has their "moments" it's some really great music, but those "moments" are just too sporadic and the "filler" in between is just excruciating at times. I wish they leaned more into their technical,"wanky" side of things, like the instrumental Dance of Eternity, and let loose more often (because that's when they make their best work). The last few minutes of Octavarium for instance (aaand that's probably why LTE works for me when DT doesn't). But I just felt assaulted with too much balladry, and ballads don't work when the voice behind them is grating. A large part of this has to do with LaBrie. I know he's rather polarizing, and I'm on the side of him not being so great, unfortunately 😞

^^ Sure. Still, I maintain that a release rating is not the appropriate way to express a dislike of an entire genre or style of music. Such ratings become useless and are a nuisance for anyone who does not share the same preferences. As an example, many unprofessional reviewers complain about too much instrumental "wankery" on DT releases - yet that is exactly what DT are famous for. Most people trying to get into DT know up front that this is what they can expect. Just as with Between The Buried And Me, except that there you also have frequent harsh vocals. It's a fixed element of their style, coming from Metalcore. Just as mellotrons are a fixed element of most 70s iconic symphonic prog releases. Wouldn't it seems strange to see someone giving E-tier ratings to those releases just because they hate mellotrons?

I think that as a (semi-)professional reviewer one needs to at least attempt to strike a balance between just going by their own preferences and respecting how a release fits into its surrounding musical landscape.

i mean yeah, when the band has their "moments" it's some really great music, but those "moments" are just too sporadic and the "filler" in between is just excruciating at times

That's how you see it. Most other prog metal aficionados would not agree - specifically for Scenes, I don't hear much filler there. Sure, it's a long release. But it is generally regarded as a masterpiece from start to finish. I think the key problem for you is that, as you mentioned, you can't get past LaBrie's vocals and probably a couple of other things, and that is preventing you from enjoying the "ballads".

I sympathize! I'm actually quite picky when it comes to vocals. That's pretty much why I don't enjoy most of Italian Symphonic Prog ;-) But I'm not going around handing out E-tier ratings to all those releases. I just ignore them, they're not for me.

Not trying to annoy you, but imagine a reviewer that dislikes the things that you like in music, giving E-tier ratings to releases you regard as masterpieces for highly subjective/unusual reasons like the music being not loud enough, or a lack of harsh vocals? While obviously valid as a rating (it's all opinion), wouldn't you rank such ratings low in usefulness?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think it boils down to this criterion:

Does the rating make sense when comparing the releases to others which are similar in style? As an example, for a really low rating, can you think of other releases which are really similar in style which you would rank much higher? Or for really high ratings, can you think of other similar releases which are much (like orders of magnitude) worse? If so, then that's a good indication that the rating will be useful to many people. If not, then if the rating is also very much higher/lower than the general consensus there is a high probability that the rating is too biased to be of much use to anybody other than yourself.

Then what's the point of having an E-tier if I can't use it? Look at the number of E ratings I have compared to Bs. I'm not seeking them out, but when it happens, it unfortunately happens. We're not professional reviewers, nor semi-professional. This site is basically a public listening log for me. I am not trashing a whole genre, quite contrary. I am stating that Scenes is, according my preference, not a very good album BECAUSE it doesn't utilize its progressive elements in a way I find interesting. You're trying to assert some kind of "objectiveness" here that aligns with the majority or plurality consensus that somehow maintains professionalism, when no such thing exists. In fact, I object your point of being a "professional" reviewer having to conform to conventional consensus - as a critic, I need to look past the expectations others others have set up via precedence and form my own critiques, even if - no, especially if - it's on the contrarian side of things.

But ultimately it boils down to I didn't enjoy it. Songwriting is bloated, unrefined, and just too melodic for me. Thus the rating reflects that. If you disagree and find it good, that's fine. Everyone has their preferences.

No, i don't think contrarian (neither wrt myself nor the "precedent") viewpoints are useless. In fact it gives me a new perspective with which to look at things and perhaps reconsider any preconceived biases.

Yes, a similar album to Scenes from a Memory is Scardust's Strangers. I found this album to be much more focused, the band went into "wankery mode" much more frequently, and the melodic sections benefited from the more virtuoso vocalist in lieu of instrumental technicality. The album runtime is much more manageable, and the concept doesn't overwhelm the listening experience. Did I find Strangers worthy of a 58% higher score (resulting from 265% more enjoyment) than Scenes? Yes absolutely. Comparatively, blows it away. Useful to me, for sure.

It's substance over style for me. Genre is irrelevant if the execution is not good. I'm rating the album. not the type of music it is.

How about The Astonishing? I can reasonably assume it's a similar style to Scenes, but it's a whole 1.57 points lower on RYM at the moment, which is massive, and what I gather from that is that RYMers in general do not find it nearly as good of an album.

We're not professional reviewers, nor semi-professional

That's all I'm saying :-)

Useful to me, for sure.

Precisely. It's useful mainly to you. I think this is one of the marks of professional reviewers - the better they are, the more useful their info is for large numbers of users. I'm not necessarily just talking about conforming to consensus - the greatest reviewers manage to combine both worlds, they make their preferences known but at the same time put them into the proper context of the style/genre. If you have no ambitions to be seen as a professional (or just great) reviewer, then of course none of this is important.

It's substance over style for me.

Yet you're complaining about "too many ballads". On Scenes, these "ballads" drive the story forward just as much as the heavier tracks. It's hard to imagine listening to Scenes and following the story, but skipping tracks like Through Her Eyes or The Spirit Carries On.

Genre is irrelevant if the execution is not good

Execution is objectively masterful on Scenes. Better than anything Scardust ever did, in my opinion as an experienced musician. As brilliant as these guys are, DT were pretty much in a league of their own, possibly with the exception of LaBrie (especially when you include live performances).

How about The Astonishing?

It's very cheesy. Cringeworthy story. Think Game of Thrones last season, but worse. Having said that, musically I like it a lot! It's much more like a musical compared to Scenes. I think it's underrated as a whole, so there I am a bit of a contrarian (I have similar opinion on Ayreon's Transitus). But I would just say that whether you like it or not depends on stylistic preferences. Do you like musicals? Do you accept "cheesiness" more than other people do (e.g. can you listen to Rhapsody of Fire without throwing up instantly)? If you answered yes and yes, then maybe The Astonishing is worth giving a try.

This is a worry, again. I and most other users of this site are not even close to semi-professional reviewers, we're just amateurs using the site in various ways, most of us essentially use it as a personal log of likes and dislikes and sometimes take the time to write a couple of sentences to justify their thoughts. Whether another person reads that and uses it to form their opinion or ignores it as not useful is entirely up to them. If I had to try and write as a professional reviewer, I'd just not bother.

Most of the people that are adding a rating for an album (to then help find new music, et cetera) are just rating it in isolation against their own personal tastes. I enjoy Scenes because I think it's great. I have in no way thought about it vs the rest of the diaspora of similar music. The closest I will have got to that is comparing it to other music from Dream Theater or maybe music of that year given its retrospective.

I don't believe my rating of 9.something is any more or less useful than someone else's E-Tier rating, and I'm not going to take offence at someone disliking something I like. Nobody should have to artificially rate something higher purely because other people like it.

In fact, here are the three blurbs written for Scenes...

"Longer than it has any right to be. Man, it's just ballad after ballad, & when it's not a ballad, it's excruciatingly melodic, save for the 10% or so of the album where the band actually does something interesting. I want more Dance of Eternity, not power ballad # n. DT is capable of wankery. Do it!" (bardberic, E 3.5, 6h ago)

"The prog metal concept albums to end all prog metal concept albums. Excellent composition and technicality, ticking all the boxes for a progressive art metal album. Somewhat unsurprisingly, by far Dream Theater's peak." (bartyMJ, S 9.9, 10M ago)

"My personal favourite album of all time." (DisgruntledPorcupine, S 10, 15y ago)

With all respect to DisgruntledPorcuipine, his high rating is FAR less 'useful' than Bardberic's, as there's no explanation at all for why it's been rated as such. I'd argue mine's not fully useful either, reading it back its a lot of buzzwords without actually saying anything in particular other than it's got some technical elements. Bardberic has actually given contextual reasons why his rating has been given. The rating might be completely contrary to most, but it's justified by talking about ballads and melody, and someone could read that and say well actually I like ballads so my opinion could be different. In that respect, it's probably the most useful review there.

And of course, the more users are on a site and rate an album, the less of an impact on a 'score' a contrary rating has anyway.

Nobody should have to artificially rate something higher purely because other people like it.

A professional reviewer should, in a way. This is all I'm saying! I'm not saying that we should all try to be professional reviewers. It's like bardberic said: He rates and reviews mostly for himself, and that's fine. He's not trying to optimize the usefulness of his ratings to a broader audience. And I don't doubt your honesty in all of this. I am saying that anyone who has the ambition to be seen as a serious reviewer (to avoid the word "professional") who rates and writes with an audience in mind has to try to look beyond just their own personal preferences.

With all respect to DisgruntledPorcupine, his high rating is FAR less 'useful' than Bardberic's, as there's no explanation at all for why it's been rated as such.

I wouldn't say it's useless - the reason given is perfectly clear, it's their favorite release of all times. Would be interesting to hear a few more details, but since this happens to be in line with the consensus (that this is one of or perhaps THE best prog metal release of all times), we can implicitly assume that the users shares the common reasoning. Having said that, I'll fully agree that the blurb does not add much information to the 100/100 rating ;-)

Regarding bardberic's blurb, I agree that it's very useful - it tells me that I can ignore the rating completely, since I do not agree with the reasoning at all. Specifically, his mentioning "ballads" suggests to me that he gave the album only a very shallow listen to the point that he didn't even consider the underlying concept, to which the "ballads" are essential. And that is I think one of the reasons for the low rating - he is turned off by certain elements of the music so much that it prevents a deeper engagement with the content, probably locking him out of ever understanding why so many other people like the album so much.

Now, the same thing is probably happening to me with other types of music. I'm not a professional reviewer either, although I am trying :-)

To summarize and reiterate, I think that all ratings are valid. Nevertheless, I find outlier ratings and reviews intriguing. I may try to make it more clear to viewers that they are special. They say a lot about the reviewer, more so than "ordinary" ratings that are close to the consensus view.