PARASOMNIA

Three-and-a-half years is a relatively long gap between Dream Theater albums. In fact, this is the longest it's ever taken them to put out a new album. However, this record also saw some rare churn (or maybe un-churn) in the band's lineup. Mike Portnoy is back behind the drums after a 15-year absence.

For my money, though, I don't notice much of a difference. I wasn't nuts about a lot of Dream Theater's work with Mike Mangini, but Portnoy has his share of spotty records with the band, too. The music here is pretty typical of the band. They write big, majestic melodies, and they also engage in astounding amounts of instrumental wankery. C'mon. It's a Dream Theater album. If you're reading this, you probably know what you're getting into.

"In the Arms of Morpheus" takes its time getting going, but after about two minutes of introductory sound effects, it blasts into some lurching riffage. Portnoy wastes no time in announcing his return, with tom fills out the wazoo. Parts of this song almost sound like Pantera riffs run through a prog filter. It's kind of interesting. But it also features a lot of typical DT cheese. I like DT cheese, but I do have my limits. If it's coming on this thick in the first track, that isn't necessarily a good sign for the rest of the album.

"Night Terror" has a long introduction, too, but instead of it being ambient noises like the first track, it's a pretty fun instrumental passage. Petrucci's riffs are impactful and engaging, and there's minimal showing off for the sake of it. When LaBrie's voice enters, it's strong. His performances over the last decade or so have been a bit uneven, but he sounds great. I really like how the band plays with uneven meters, too.

This song isn't all good news, though. The instrumental passages in the song's second half drag on for longer than they need to. I can certainly respect Portnoy, Petrucci, Rudess, and Myung for their chops. What they play is very complicated, and I'm really excited to see them do it live later this month. But in a studio context, all this soloing can come off as sterile and pointless. In other words, this is pretty typical latter-era Dream Theater. There is exciting songwriting alongside endless guitar and synth show-off sessions.

The above two paragraphs can be repeated for most of the album, so I'm not going to go over every song in excruciating detail. I will cover various highlights and lowlights, though.

"A Broken Man" channels Tool at a few points, and that's a nice change of pace. It's also less bloated-feeling than "Night Terror", but I wouldn't exactly call it concise. The instrumentals in the second half remind me more of Liquid Tension Experiment than Dream Theater with their jazzy and bluesy tones.

The galloping intro of "Dead Asleep" is solid, and this is a pretty standard DT track. Despite being the longest song so far, it's also the most focused.

Cliched narration kicks off "Midnight Messiah". That's another trope this band loves to trot out. This is not LaBrie's strongest performance, but I do like that Rudess is relatively restrained for a lot of it. The chorus isn't their strongest work, and this song grows repetitious by its end.

"Bend the Clock" is the obligatory ballad. Skip it.

Parasomnia ends on "The Nightman Cometh" "The Shadow Man Incident", a 19-minute opus. Its opening passage is fun and interesting, but it does suffer from a bit of the unnecessary-overture-itis I diagnosed in their last big epic. The first real part of it, though, is sluggish and kind of dull.When they pick up the tempo it gets good again, but Dream Theater isn't doing anything new here. In isolation, stripped of context, it's a great piece of prog metal that balances heaviness and melodicism. However, when looking at this band's past output, it's de rigueur.

Parasomnia, Dream Theater's 16th full-length release, is alright. It's not dreck like their self-titled or garbage like The Astonishing, but it holds a similar place in my mind as the last two Mangini Theater albums, Distance over Time and A View from the Top of the World. It's enjoyable, but it doesn't do much to stand out within their oeuvre. It is one of the Dream Theater albums of all time.

Review originally published here: theeliteextremophile.com/2025/02/17/album-review-dream-theater-parasomnia/

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