WHEN DREAM AND DAY UNITE

When Dream and Day Unite shows the unrefined early days of the soon to be monumental Dream Theater. The compositions are a bit less virtuose and powerful than they are now notorious for. Still, you can see the obvious skill and great potential. And sometimes, of course, the band shines both in writing and performance. LaBrie was not yet on board, Charlie Dominici does vocals on this album. His voice is rather weak and bland in comparison to James'. He does make for a good, though standard, 80s metal vocalist.

I might be a bit hard on this album because I am not a fan of 80s metal, and I adore the later work of this band, which is far beyond this. It may also because of the next topic I will address, which is to me the biggest down fall of the album: the production. The production, in short, is very poor. The remaster sounds quite a bit better, though. The remaster alone gives this an extra star!

For me, the most enjoyable songs here are "Ytse Jam," "Afterlife," and "Only a Matter of Time."

I bet if the current Dream Theater re-recorded the album, it would be worthy of the ranks of their later works. I do like these songs live (at least from the ones I have seen), which supports my reicarnation theory about this. In the state that we have it, I can only recommend it to those collecting all of Dream Theater's studio albums or big 80s metal fans.