IMAGES AND WORDS

A mix of smooth music, fast aggressive metal sounds and progressive sounds!!!(a fusion of many styles included here!!!), and the album is well crafted!! A important contributer to prog metal, full of complexity and darn good musicians!!

They are major pioneers of Progressive Metaland helped to make Prog lovable again,has brought a new generation of Proggers into the scene, and Images and Words has great fast and melodic composions!!

100% RECOMMENDED!!

Images and Words include the following tracks: "Pull Me Under" resembles Metallica and many 70s Symphonic bands, a great opener and one of my favourites, with some excellent riffs and a true progressive track 5/5!!!

"Another Day" is a ballard and is not a prog song at all, just an awful ballad like if they are trying to sell out, saxophone is also a poor inclusion, not very metal and is a poor quality musicianship from a band that didn't need to go so low for this!! sorry but I can't give it more than 0/5 really poor!!.

"Take the Time" has keyboards as an intro and has a nice landscape to them, and has some top cracker riffs, powerful drumming is nice, the keyboard solos are rubbish and a guitar solo would have been more sophisticated, riffs starts again and more into the song is more solos and a sudden piano play kicks in with the guitar, the finisher kicks in with a cool fast power melodic riff that is the song closer, a reasonably 4/5!!!.

"Surrounded" is a ballad with poor guitar riffs and the weakest track on this album, 1/5!!!.

"Metropolis - Part I", is Metallica influenced and if I recall has an extract from "And Justice for All" a Metallica album from the late 1980s,the riffs are more simlified this time with some lush metal riffs (which is fair enough by me!!), a more simple metal banger with little Prog in it but as a true metalhead I have no problem with this!!, another favourite of mine, won't appeal to all proggers, but a real metal track that has to be turned up 5/5!!

"Under a Glass Moon" is bobarded with loads of keyboards and many Metallica influenced eleements in this track, again as pointed out more basic rock music with little progression, they try to hard here to progress,but not a favourite of mine, a fairly average track that scores a modest 3/5!!!

"Wait for sleep" the keyboards open up the track and those keyboards are the piano and the synthesisers with another ballad (what is it with these ballads!!) at least this track is progressive, but not a headbanger, with a band of this standard you want metal music and just special prog metal, nevermaind a modest 3/5!!!

"Learning to Live" is a different story, with more oomph compared to the previous track, a riff kicks in agin the riffs are Metallica influenced and have been extracted from "Ride the Lightning" and "Justice", the drumming is a bit retro in perspective, and another riff kicks in (and you guessed Metallica influenced!!!), but a change does arise in the few minutes into the song with keyboard badly sounded, guitaring is good as Petrucci always puts on a good performance, and in all another favourite of mine 5/5.

Dream Theater are heavily influnced by Metallica another favourite metal band of mine, influences are definetaly from "Justice For All", "Master of Puppets" and "Ride the Lightning" all Metallica's classic Progressive Metal albums that must be heard (this is where you hear Dream Theatre's blueprint sound!!!).

I think this is their best album of all time but could have been better, those ballads let it down though!!, and I strongly recommend it!!, this is a big step foward from the original Prog Rock, but that's before my time and does not appeal to me that much, gimme modern PROG metal anyday!!! 100% recommend = 10 / 10 (but could be better)!!

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