SIX DEGREES OF INNER TURBULENCE

The day after the extraordinary "Scenes From a Memory", surely one of the best albums in Progressive Metal, was a huge challenge for Dream Theater. A challenge they did not shy away from, and taking advantage of their stellar compositional and musical moment and the widespread recognition of the early 2000s, the band released the voluminous 'Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" (2002), a work of just under a hundred minutes divided into two distinct parts.

The dark first part tackles heavy digestion tracks: the intense "The Glass Prison", referring to the first three of the twelve steps of the program in the fight against alcohol abuse and sustained by an excellent introduction with John Petrucci's huge guitar riffs and Mike Portnoy's hyperactive percussion, the disenchantment for religious dogmas in "Blind Faith" marked by John Myung's deep bass and the exchange of protagonism between Petrucci's guitars and Jordan Rudess' synthesizers, the dreary and insipid "Misunderstood", the controversy over stem cells in the powerful "The Great Debate" with riffs and chords very much indebted to Tool and Rush to mention a couple of influences, and the deep grief at irreparable loss in the mid-tempo, melancholic and heartbreaking "Disappear".

The second half, one of the New Yorkers' most committed creations, bravely exposes six different disorders and upheavals that afflict the complicated human mind. After the instrumental orchestral arrangement "Overture", which includes some metal touches, the suite flows without pause through Petrucci's thick guitar riffs in the traumatised "War Inside My Head", through Portnoy's percussive display and his haunting second voice supporting James LaBrie in the schizophrenic and very thrash metal "The Test That Stumped Them All", also through the pause proposed by Rudess's keyboards in the heartbroken and maternal "Goodnight Kiss", by the unplugged harmonic luminosity of the autistic "Solitary Shell", by the intricate intensity of the bipolar "About to Crash (reprise)", and finally by the epic and dissociative "Losing Time" that prologues the reflective call for understanding and acceptance of those afflicted by these disorders in the conclusive "Grand Finale", and its prolonged and disturbing final point.

"Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence", the band's sixth album, was one of the best releases of the genre in the 2000s, and ratified Dream Theater's position as one of the must-have references in Progressive Metal.

4/4.5 stars