METROPOLIS PART 2 - SCENES FROM A MEMORY

This album truly is Dream Theater's greatest achievement. The music thoroughly expresses the member's mastery of writing, composition, mastery in their individual instruments, and bard-like storytelling. To any prog listener this album should be as commercially accessible as they come, yet that is not the case. Dream Theater is growing in the non-progressive community, but as usual, not for their best album. This fact proves my point that the album is not as accessible as many would believe. If it were to be considered accessible in any way, it's in the progressive sense, and the fact that this album is, I believe, a landmark in prog metal history.

This album is a concept album telling a story of murder and mystery. The story is hard to fully grasp unless one reads the lyrics, but once you understand the story, the music fills in the emotions perfectly generated by the story. Musically, this album is as good as it gets. No matter how many times I listen to it, I always finding myself desiring the sound of epic songs such as Fatal Tragedy or Home. All of the songs are riveting from start to finish with LaBrie giving a classic performance save the song Regression, where he comes off as somewhat out of key. John Petrucci only gives what can be expected: driving riffs and solos of unimaginable technical prowess. Rudess performs at a level to compete with Petrucci, gracing the album with epic solos that can only be created by a few of the most skilled keyboardists. The bass, Myung, being a god of the bass guitar, suffers from the affliction of not being very noticeable throughout the album, but less so compared to many other of the band's albums. Finally, the drummer Mike Portnoy, regarded as one of the greatest metal drummers, this album makes that claim hard to refute, or at least at the time the album was forged. From poly-rhythms to masterful fills and solos, Portnoy gives any drummer a run for his money.

This is a must have for anyone who seeks to own a viable prog collection, such a collection would entirely be incomplete until this album joined in its ranks. It seems there are two distinct types of reactions to this album: those who feel it is an absolute, near perfect album void of many flaws (if any), and those who don't understand what is masterful about it. I also requires a number of listens to understand fully; many of my friends have come to adore this album in good time, even if they didn't think much of it at first, and for some it had become perhaps their favorite album of all time, and is definitely one of mine.