WHEN DREAM AND DAY UNITE

When dream and day unite officially started the musical career of Dream Theater. Dubbed the next big thing at the time of publication, with so many remarks on inspiration from Rush and Queensryche, it was indeed a good start for the band, hinting at what could (and luckily did) come out later on.

The album starts with a bang: the first one and a half minute of A fortune in lies is so fast, dense and powerful to inevitably catch all the listener's attention. The song shows immediately the band in high sync and tightness. After the nice and well structured Status seeker, Ytse Jam lands the first great DT classic, a hypnotic and remarkable instrumental piece. The killing hand is the first example of multipart song in DT history, whose essentiality and good arrangement are well balanced, nothing too pompous or overplayed. Light fuse and get away and Afterlife are more metallish though still with good tempo changes and patterns. The one who help to set the sun is another sort of small epic, with an intesting keyboard introduction. The album ends with Only a matter of time, which the band chose to include in the Score anniversary setlist. The songs are quite short compared to later DT standards, but such compactness is here sign of self-control; later the band will, unfortunately, introduce more and more self- indulgence.

The overall album sound is rough and sort of ripe, but this adds in a way to the craftyness of the product, in which the band is notably willing to emerge and to demonstrate its status. In spite of such tension, there is no excessive show-off, all band players do a good job without overshadowing one another. This gives the listener the impression of an already experienced band.

A technically very good debut album, whose quality would have been even better with a superior production.