THE SILENT MAN

For me, this is quite an important single. Forget about The Silent Man for a minute and listen to Eve. This is an instrumental which is unlike anything that Dream Theater have done before or since. Just for 5 minutes, out goes all the metal and musical technicality, and in comes pure beauty. There are certainly very few tracks that are quite as beautiful as this. It's quite hard to believe that this song is by Dream Theater actually. I've had friends who despise Dream Theater tell me that they love this piece. The best part of the song comes at the 4 minute mark, when John Petrucci lets out a heart-wrenching guitar solo. By mellowing down like this, Dream Theater provide us with something really special. I'm actually glad that this track was never released on a studio album, as it would never make sense there. Make sure that you are one of the lucky few to hear this song!

As for the rest of the single, what can I say? The Silent Man always seemed like a strange track to me. Dream Theater don't often do acoustic, so when they do, it's interesting to see what they come up with. I guess I do like the chorus, as it's very heartwarming, if a little cheesy. It's not the kind of track you listen to Dream Theater for, but an enjoyable one nonetheless.

There's also a demo of the 'Images And Words' track Take The Time. I'm such a huge fan of this track that I love to hear it in any form (except of course the castrated form on 'Chaos in Motion', but we won't talk of that). There are no surprises in this demo, as the band seem to play this note for note as they do on the album. There are a few noticable differences though: the song seems faster and lighter, the 'Holy cow, wait a minute, c'mon, phew!' sample is missing (but curiously the Italian sample is still there) and John Petrucci comes in a few bars too early on his final guitar solo whilst James LaBrie decides to sing 'Find all you need in your mind...' not twice or four times, but an atypical three times. The sound quality is just as good as you'd hear from any studio recording. Obviously this song needed a few tweaks before being ready, but listening to this demo is great fun. In fact, listening to this whole single is fun. Three great Dream Theater tracks are on here, making it well worth hearing this single if you're a fan of the group or not.

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.