THE SILENT MAN

Taken from the 1994 album 'Awake', 'The Silent Man' is a bit of an odd choice for a single. A soft, near-four minute acoustic ballad, it's a great song when heard in context of the album, but alone, as a single, it doesn't quite have the same impact.

It's not a bad song as such, and on the album it actually works well as the third part of a trilogy titled 'A Mind Beside Itself'. But it just seems dreary and dull as a single. There's plenty of other material from the 'Awake' album that would have made more sense to use as promotional material, and a better representation of what the record has to offer.

Still, it's an okay song I guess. A demo of 'Take the Time' is a welcome b-side, though it sounds near-identical to the finished product, making it something only die-hard fans would care about. And there's 'Eve'. A short instrumental which the band had jammed out to at gigs, but this actual studio recording doesn't really do anything for me.

This one is a bit of rarity these days, and since Dream Theater is such a beloved cult band, it's likely this is still sought after by collectors, and as such, that's all this is now, a collector's item. Nothing more, nothing less.