IMAGES AND WORDS

Dream Theater's 'Images and Words' is undoubtedly one of the most influential heavy music albums of the early 1990s, and perhaps the first commercially successful record attempting to find a common ground between heavy metal and prog, with Metallica, Iron Maiden, Rush and Yes being among the band's strongest influences at the time. And it is fair to say that the modern history of progressive music would be unimaginable without the success of 'Images and Words', at least for what concerns its heavier side. Armed with a new singer and a desire to finally find a way to break through after the lack of success of their debut album from 1989, Dream Theater had settled a record deal with Atco, an Atlantic Records offshoot. And while the band of Berklee alumni was not the first to play around with sophisticated sounds and pompous concepts, other acts before them just could not get that commercial exposure, which otherwise catapulted Dream Theater to the prog metal stratosphere, much like the case of Marillion and neo-prog in the previous decade.

At the same time 'Images and Words' is certainly one of the most adventurous and sophisticated albums of the period, as the band including Portnoy, Petrucci, Myung, Moore and James LaBrie masterfully display an enviable technical proficiency and skill combined with an engaging songwriting capacity that could have only been matched by the likes of Queensryche, Fates Warning, or Maiden at the time. Several songs off the album would go on to become absolute classics and staples of their live shows, including their biggest hit 'Pull Me Under'. However, the album is also significant because it provided a great template for the music of the band, one that they would take up and develop entirely in the following years, presenting a very unique blend of memorable writing with instrumental wizardry - their style of writing complex, epic and melodramatic music is all over the place and is best portrayed by the longer tracks on the album, including 'Take the Time', 'Metropolis - Part I', and 'Learning to Live'. With this in mind, one could not help to see how the music of Dream Theater here, much more pronounced than on their debut album, is a somewhat pompous mixture of classic progressive rock from the 1970s, heavy metal from the 1980s, tinted with a glam-adjacent swagger. Within such a musical framework the drums and the guitars would inevitably have to be played miraculously, which is certainly the case. What is really interesting is the role of Kevin Moore in the formation of DT's early sound, as his playing seems to be much more focused on providing a sonic background, layered with texture and tone, inherently different from the technique of Jordan Rudess, for example.

A severely important album that can be considered era-defining, there is no doubt why 'Images and Words' has cemented its status as a classic of the genre, and while occasional moments of instrumental indulgence are indeed present, the album remains one of the tightest and most focused albums of Dream Theater still, full of magical musical passages, introspective lyrics, and majestic playing all throughout, which come to the fore as the band's engaging songwriting skills elevate the entire experience of the album.