Album Review: Dream Theater - A View From The Top Of The World

Dream Theater's career has always been a bit of a rough ride. When the embrace the 'progressive' aspect of progressive metal, they shift their sound here and there, with results that vary wildly. When they embraced Metallica sized riffing on "Train Of Thought", it worked. When they embraced Muse, or tried to integrate harsh vocals, the results were less successful. When they attempted their second concept album, "The Astonishing", the results were downright disastrous. For all the adventurism progressive metal can allow, Dream Theater is decidedly better off when they stick to doing what they do best. That's why "A Dramatic Turn Of Events" was my Album Of The Year ten years ago. It's also why "Distance Over Time" righted the course last time around.

With this record, the band puts their adventurous streak fully into the twenty-minute closer, while letting the rest of the album focus on their strengths. Of course, that can go the other way, which it does on opening "The Alien". That song recycles a handful of tropes from various other Dream Theater songs, several of which were also lead singles to previous albums. There is a formula to some of what Dream Theater does, and it is exposed on that song, which adheres too closely, and with diminishing results. Maybe if it was better than "On The Backs Of Angels", or the others it mimics, but it isn't. It's a solid song, but a solid copy is just that.

"Answering The Call" is much more interesting, where we get more heavy chords than intricate riffing, which adds a different texture to their normal sound. Better yet are the layered backing vocals on the chorus, which amplify James' own voice, and provides a wider scope that makes the song stand out from what you might be expecting. On an album with a ten and a twenty-minute 'epic', the most epic sounding moment is that chorus.

There's a stronger emphasis on melody through the majority of the record, which is when I feel Dream Theater are at their best. No matter which album you pick, they can play fast and complicated runs that will leave you spinning. The impressiveness of their abilities is never in questions, but they don't always have songs operating on the same level as their technical skills. For every "Outcry", there are two other songs whose melodies will go right in one year and out the other. Even the ten-minute "Sleeping Giant" orbits around an attempt at a larger than life chorus.

The first six songs on the record are in line with the other modern albums I would put in the upper tier. They're highly enjoyable, both on the progressive level and as surface level melodic metal. Compared to "Distance Over Time", they might be even easier to digest on the occasions when you don't want to turn your music into math. But with a twenty-minute song at the end, the album hinges on whether they have produced another "The Count Of Tuscany", or another "Illumination Theory".

The idea of formula pops up again there, with the title track following the same tactics as those previous epics, going through one metallic run for the first half, then slowing down to an atmospheric section in the middle, before building back up to a rousing second half. I like it more than "Illumination Theory", but it lacks the quirkiness of "The Count Of Tuscany", so it sounds very much like two eight minute Dream Theater songs held together by a bit of instrumental tape, rather than a single twenty-minute composition.

So when we take stock of the album as a whole, it falls into the category of being very good but wholly predictible. These are very good Dream Theater songs, but they so heavily echo songs of the past that putting those thoughts out of your head can be a bit difficult. They have followed the blueprint to make one of their better albums, but they followed it too closely. Despite all the progginess on display, the album is so safe and rote that it fails to have much of an identity of its own. This album is a well rendered summation of this era of Dream Theater, and it's certainly one of their better efforts, but the one drawback is hard to avoid.

Whether or not you can put that aside will determine whether this album is great, trite, or somewhere in between.