A CHANGE OF SEASONS

A Change Of Season is more like an "Extended Play" than a CD or an album. Just for quick review, for you who don't know what an Extended Play is and I am sure most of you have know this, Extended Play is a recorded material which is too short to be called single but too long to be called an album. Furthermore, for me, and Extended Play is very identical with progressive music.

Anyway, A Change Of Season is an Extended Play which made just a year after the album Awake in 1994. In this year, Derek Sherenian holds the keyboard section of Dream Theater. The album consists of a somewhat-very-long song, which has the same title with the Extended Play title, A Change Of Season. The song itself can be divided in to seven parts which you can see on top of the page. The other songs are medleys taken from Elton John's songs, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Kansas, Queen, Journey, Dixie Dregs and last but not least, Genesis.

The main song, A Change Of Season for me is one of Dream Theater best songs. I have been looking for the best comparison with A Change Of Season and I have decided the song Octavarium is pretty much the same with A Change Of Season. The length is about 20+ minutes and is divided in sections, however, Octavarium is divided in to 5 section. One other thing in common is the composition of the song, which has the idea of "repeating", or back to the start. Notice in the seventh part or the last section in A Change Of Season, the title is The Crimson Sunset, and the best part is, the riffs in The Crimson Sunset has the same character as the riffs in The Crimson Sunrise. As an illustration, the last lyric in Octavarium is like this, "A perfect sphere, colliding with the fate, this story ends where it began."

Well the song started with The Crimson Sunrise, which is an instrumental part. Notice there is a section is The Crimson Sunrise which is pretty much the same with Erotomania riffs in Awake. After that, the next part is Innocence Faded, when James LaBrie started to sing. Next, Carpe Diem, which means seize the day. And in this part, there are words exactly the same as the meaning of Carpe Diem, Seize The Day. The last part of Carpe Diem is more into heavy rock. After that, another instrumental part, The Darkest Of Winters. For me, the instrumental part is absolutely great, the combination of progressive guitar and keyboard solo with odd time signature from the drums section, but once again, the bass line is not very dominant. The next part is Another World, which has LaBrie's vocal again. Uh I have been waiting for this, the instrumental part of The Inevitable Summer is the best part. Just like other Dream Theater songs, John Petrucci is always add a deep feeling through his guitar solo, maybe its not a really hard and heavy solo, but the selection of tones give me (and I hope you feel it too!) a deep feeling. Then the song was ended with The Crimson Sunset.

As for the medleys, I can't say anything as those songs are not Dream Theater songs, but just as a tribute to the artists mentioned above. Overall impression, great! Timur Imam Nugroho - Indonesia

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