AWAKE

In the midst of the challenging panorama posed by the hurricane-like grunge wave that seemed to sweep everything away in the nineties, and after their successful "Images & Words", Dream Theater kept the progressive rock flag flying in one of its most corpulent aspects with "Awake", their third album (1994). A work full of disturbing atmospheres and sombre structures twinned with the seventies sonorities of the genre modernised and fused with the incendiary influences of heavy metal.

To the experimentation of hypnotic airs in the opening hard rocker "6:00" and John Petrucci's dense guitar riffs in the demanding "Caught in a Web", Dream Theater adds to their approach ingredients sprinkled with hostile black metal in the dark "The Mirror", and thunderous trash metal in the agitated "Lie", but sustains, above all, a marked progressive intentionality with the huge suite "Mind Beside Itself" and the perfect communion between Petrucci's guitars and Kevin Moore's keyboards in the instrumental segment "i. Erotomania", and in the schizophrenic density of "ii. Voices", a reference to complicated mental disorders, later complemented by the intricate brilliance of the extended "Scarred".

On the other hand, the melancholic winds that permeate and hover over much of the work find their climax in the steamy ambience of "Lifting Shadow Off a Dream", with an unbeatable James LaBrie on vocals, and with the hopeless "Space-Dye Vest" and Moore's aching piano notes in a thick and depressive sound layer. Excellent end to the album and also to the collaboration of the keyboardist, who would leave the band on good terms later on.

"Awake" is one of the New Yorkers' best works and part of the foundations on which progressive metal was beginning to consolidate at that time.

4/4.5 stars