A CHANGE OF SEASONS

This is a great album... well no, technically not an album, just an EP, because the only song is the title track which is 23 minutes long. They decided to add in a bunch of live cover songs put into medleys, from their favourite influential artists. Of course to me, that's of little importance when I want a Dream Theater album, but at least it fills up the space that's missing, and I'd rather have it than just 23 minutes of Dream Theater. But even though I don't care for it, it doesn't mean it's not amazing. Dream Theater also makes a great cover band. I still remember not knowing much about Dream Theater, and I watched them cover my favourite band, Pink Floyd with extremely critical eyes, but they pulled it off amazingly. All the songs they cover are great songs Queen, Zeppelin, Floyd, Genesis, Kansas, and more. So without the 23 minute song, it makes for a good half cover album itself.

Now to talk about the more important thing, the title track.

A Change of Seasons was their first really good long track. They a 20 minute song before, A Mind Beside Itself, but that didn't really seem as epic. It did, and is a great song, but this blows that one away. This track is extremely progressive, as is most of Dream Theater's material. Dream Theater is a blend of Progressive rock and heavy metal, but in general I'd say their progressiveness shows WAY more than their metal side, and if they had to make a choice, they'd probably play prog over metal. So a metal head who isn't interested in prog really couldn't enjoy it a lot... maybe Train of Thought, and a song or two from Systematic Chaos, and maybe the song Panic Attack from Octavarium, but that's it. It's just too technical and progressive for a strictly metalhead to take in. But obviously, the eclectic nature of progressive rock leads to its fans having extremely open minds. I think that it's so easy to enjoy Dream Theater... even if you're a progressive rock fan and don't like metal that much.

A Change of Seasons begins epically and flows easily throughout the entire track, so much that it's hard for me to remember which places the song changes between its varied segments. There is a big air of surrealism in this album, and I think that mostly comes from Derek Sherinian's keyboards... it's something that's only present on this album and also Falling into Infinity. Beginning very quietly, it gets heavier quite suddenly, and has an instrumental metal section followed by that surreal feeling, and LaBrie singing lyrics about life, and change, etc. I'm not going to explain the entire track in detail, as many people probably already have. But I'll just say that it alternates between heavy, progressive, acoustic, and all throughout has that air of surrealism which I really love. The ending is very epic, and the outro is the same as the intro, in a sort've full circle thing... like how seasons change and then return again. Much like Octavarium later. Speaking of Octavarium, I'd say that Octavarium wins over this song, but not by much, and I just like Octavarium better because of its increasingly varied sound. This song kinda has that same feeling throughout the entire song. But it's still really really great. Believe me. It's perfect, and I give it more than a 4, but I realize people have different tastes than me. If you do NOT like metal in particular, don't try Dream Theater out at all, lol. But I think that being a prog head, you probably have a wide taste in music, and can get used to it.

4 Stars, Excellent addition to any prog music collection. Although if you want to try out Dream Theater for the first time, I would say start with Octavarium, Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, or Images & Words.