WHEN DREAM AND DAY UNITE

This first official studio album by Dream theater and the only one featuring the singer Charlie Dominici is a very strong, soft and dreamy progressive rock record in the key of "Rush". There are even some very sligthly disco pop influences in a couple of songs that remind me of Genesis, Europe or Queen, mostly because of the keyboards, the choirs and especially the vocals. I would say that I really like those vocals and think that Dominici has a very unique and catchy voice and is not really worse than James LaBrie even if he doesn't have the same skills as the later singer. What I really adore about this album are the perfect keyboard sounds that perfectly fit to the progressive rockers and take an important place without being to dominating. Almost every song has some brilliant and catchy keyboard sections. Most people say that Kevin Moore did his masterpieces on "Awake" but I think that he already created them on "When Dream And Day Unite" or "Images And Words". Especially the intro of the brilliant epic "Only A Matter Of Time" is amazing and memorable.

The only negative points about the album are that the band has not yet found a quite unique style and copies a lot its idols and legends and the fact that a true catchy masterpiece is still missing on this album. The mediocre sound quality and production of this record is probably a negative point for the purists and progressive music maniacs but I think that it gives a certain early eighties charm to this record.

The band already shows its brilliant musical talent in th very surprising opener "A Fortune In Lies" that has changes in rhythm and style all the time but is able to sound consistant. The rhythm section with bass a nd drums is doing a very well job on this first track.

One of the greatest songs is the band's first epic track "The Killing Hand" that could have found a place on "Operation: Mindcrime" by Queensryche with its very slow harmonies in the beginning and softly high pitched voice that tells us a complex story. I really like the fast keyboard solo and the quiet passages that always come back and build the core of the whole progressive structure that meanders all the time. But the other epic "Only A Matter Of Time" is even greater in my opinion and convinces with perfect keyboard harmonies and logically arranged changes in style. Songs like these two epics take some time to grow and I am just about discovering this first record of Dream Theaer and I am still highly adoring it. There is something fresh and magic about those two epics and the band later realized that they are really talented in creating those complex structures and focused on such material. But they rarely got the same original and charming level of those two early masterpieces.

"Afterlife" convinces with an excellent guitar play and proves us already that every musician in the band has special skills. The majestic instrumental song "The Ytse Jam" proves that in splendid colours where every instruments gets the right place and time to elaborate some very progressive rhythms and sounds.

To conclude, this album is the first but by far not the worst record by Dream Theater but maybe one of their most original and simply best albums. This album grows more and more on me and I would put it definitely in my top 5 of the band's discography. Many people discover this album quite lately because it is not as often and easy to find than the other works and be´cause some people don't seem to trust another vocalist than James LaBrie and that's a shame because this is a very strong and diversified album that I would recommend to any fan of progressive rock or metal.

Originally published on www.metal-archives.com on January 3rd of the year 2011.