LIVE AT BUDOKAN

This is my favorite DVD of all time. You are in for a nearly 3 hour live set in the period where the music and technicality was most demanding of Dream Theater's history. This was an absolutely flawless performance from these four virtuosos and singer. There are a total of 18 songs played; this is prog we are talking about too! Dream Theater also decided to explore a bit and add an extra 8 minutes to 'Beyond this Life' and create the glorious 'Instrumedley'. The sound and picture quality are some of the best I've seen from live DVDs.

Most of 'Train of Thought' is played on this DVD except for 'Honor Thy Father' and 'Vacant', which are the odd ones out on the album anyway. Finally, there are the best tracks from 'Falling Into Infinty' on this set, such as the great ballad featuring an amazing guitar solo on 'Hollow Years', the experimental 'New Millenium' and one of my all-time favorites 'Trial of Tears'. From 'Six Degrees' we get some of more praised tracks from the suite which are 'War Inside my Head', 'The Test that Stumped them All', 'Goodnight Kiss' and 'Solitary Shell'. If you are missing some of your favorite tracks, you can probably find you favorite section of it on the 10-minute 'Instrumedley' song. Wow, what an amazing track list! Other songs include 'Only a Matter of Time' from the debut, 'Disappear' from 'Six Degrees' and the most well known song, 'Pull me Under'. Every song was preformed with no mistakes and LaBrie has some good and bad moments which is nothing out of the ordinary.

It took me a while to watch the second disc.I didn't care for it because I would rather spend 3 hours watching the awesome concert again. It gives some typical footage of the album 'Train of Thought' when it was in the works. Plus some of John Petrucci's Guitar World tape, Jordan Rudess's Keyboard World tape and a hilarious drum solo by Mike Portnoy, where he takes members from the audience to play with him.my favorite. There is also a tour video and Multi-angle version of 'Instrumedley', which is also pretty interesting.

I can recommend this to anyone that does or doesn't have a Dream Theater album to see what the band is all about. Technical wizardry at work here is with no flaws. I can't imagine what the people in the audience were going through while watching this perfect performance.

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