IMAGES AND WORDS

Another one of Dream Theater's great albums. I decided to purchase it after my friend Graham, a fellow Dream Theater fan, suggested this album after I fell in love with Metropolis Pt. 2, Scenes from a Memory. In it's overall sound, it seems somewhat of an intermediate between the pop-driven hair metal and grungy thrash metal of the day - put progressive. It was without a doubt a ground-breaking album for progressive metal and launched Dream Theater as it's forefront runner in the 90's, and gave progressive metal something to relate to. When you consider that the only even moderately well known "progressive" metal bands around at that time were Queensryche and Fates Warning, you can see my point. The music itself is very well composed, especially for it's time. The first half is made up of shorter, less proggy though very well written songs including the only metal song I have heard so far to include a Saxophone. The second half has longer songs (besides Wait for Sleep of course), each of which is very progressive and creative, with a complex quality that never lets up. It is great considering it's only the band's second album, and the overall playing ability and song-craft is superb. I would name a few highlights of the album, but an album such as this has every song as a highlight except perhaps Under A Glass Moon, which is still a really good song. I can't seem to make up my mind on whether to give this a four or five, but I guess I'll give it the former as to reserve my fives for the few better albums out there. All in all I rate it a 4.5 out of 5, an excellent album, if not a masterpiece and I recommend it to anyone who wants to give progressive metal a try.