DREAM THEATER - SCORE: 20TH ANNIVERSARY WORLD TOUR LIVE WITH THE OCTAVARIUM ORCHESTRA

Me and my brother got known Dream Theater in early 2007, and some weeks before Christmas we had the opportunity to go to a shop and choose something which we would like to get. There were three DVDs of the band and we succeeded to persuade our mother to buy all of them.

The first one I watched was Score. And yes, I was immediately blown away after listening to Octavarium. As the days went by, I discovered the whole first disc with the amazing amount of music (nearly 150 minutes) performed on one occasion.

Everything is near to perfect here: the quality of the sound and the film (the members are equally shown, okay, John Myung a bit less), the performance of the five musicians (what else would you expect?) and the tracklist.

Which one consists of songs mostly representing the softer side of DT. The opener The Root of All Evil is one of the few exceptions: this song is heavy, but establishes the frenetic mood during the gig very well.

The second is I Walk Beside You, another song from Octavarium, their last album at that time. And then the journey into the time begins with the energetic and awesome Majesty-era Another Won, it flows into Afterlife from the only album without LaBrie - and he sings this song much better, then Dominici did! Under a Glass Moon from Images & Words: although this is not my favourite off of that masterpiece, I admit that it was the best choice here. Why? Well, Pull Me Under and Take the Time would be to heavy, and Learning to Live would be too long - don't forget, they planned to perform two epics - and Metropolis...let's wait a bit. From Awake, we get Innocence, from Falling, we get nothing! This hole is filled by Raise the Knife, a formerly officially unreleased song from the sessions.

While the band plays The Spirit Carries On, the crowd lights some candles or lighters, Petrucci's slow but beautiful solo fascinates every people in the impressive Radio City Music Hall. After that the five musicians leave the stage...and the orchestra in the background (not seen earlier) surprises the fans. They start playing Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence! When Overture ends, Dream Theater join in and they do it all the way - 42 minutes of continuous music! Excellent.

What shows their greatness the best is the fact, that when they finish it, they don't even let the fans clapping too long, don't let themselves be praised...the lights go out, and the long epic is followed by the two-minute-long, beautiful Vacant, arranged for the full orchestra. And they reached the Octavarium days again, another ballad comes, called The Answer Lies Within. Wonderous.

The must-have song is Sacrified Sons (about 9/11), as their hometown is New York City. The tension heightens, but decreases again when Rudess starts Octavarium with an extended Continuum solo. The whole song is fantastic, however, the show must end after that. But DT is not going hom without an encore, and Metropolis completes this unforgettable night.

The bonus disc offers us an enjoyable documentary dealing with the history of the band (Myung also speaks there a lot, what a pleasant surprise!), a funny animation, which was done for one of the instrumental parts of Octavarium (during the concert, that's running as the background film, and sometimes it's shown us on the full screen), plus 3 bonus tracks: Another Day filmed in Tokyo, '93, The Great Debate (Bucharest, '02) and Honor Thy Father (Chicago, '05). The first two are good, the third is not so interesting (honestly, I dislike the song). So, it is worth to have included the bonus disc.

Score is the ultimate live experience, a real masterpiece, Dream Theater on their peak - not just for fans, for everybody, who enjoys prog.