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Images and Words - Dream Theater (1992)

AkselJ

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Images and Words - Dream Theater's second album, and their first with new vocalist James LaBrie. By many considered a masterpiece and their finest work, and not without reason. The album starts out with the 8-minute long Pull Me Under, the bands greatest hit to date. A pretty decent track, although I would consider it the worst on the album. Moving on, we have the four and a half minute Another Day. Heavily piano-based, with brilliant vocal performance from LaBrie, and great solos (including a guest appearance of Jay Beckenstein on soprano saxophone), this is one of the tracks that really stands out to me. It just may be my favorite. Following this, we have Take the Time. Eight minutes twenty, and considerably heavier than the previous tracks, this is a really good one. It sets a really eerie atmosphere from the very beginning and develops into a really good song with complex structure, great work on both guitar and synth, as well as a bass-solo from Myung. Which is very rare, as he hates bass-solos. Although his performance is great on all the tracks on Images, LaBrie's performance on this is really outstanding. Then comes Surrounded. A calm, five and a half minute track, starting very calmly with a synth riff, it builds up, maintaining a happy, uplifting mood, then suddenly drops towards the calm in the beginning with a piano/vocal outro. Now, for a highlight of Dream Theater history: Metropolis Pt. 1 (The Miracle and the Sleeper). This track, 9 and a half minutes long, is the first part of Metropolis, which would later spawn the only concept album Dream Theater would ever make to date, Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From A Memory. The line "Scenes from a memory" even appears in the song. This track features some of the best keyboard playing I have heard from Kevin Moore, and brilliant work on the other instruments. LaBrie's voice is also very good on this. The next track is Under A Glass Moon. 7 minutes long, this one is to many some of Petrucci's finest work. In my opinion, it's not really that good. It never stood out to me. There's not a single thing in the entire song that makes me come back to it. Wait for Sleep follows, only two and a half minutes long, making it one of the shortest in Dream Theater history. It is very piano based, and the complex structure and time signature changes are apparent very early in the song. Although Images doesn't have a title track, this is the closest you get, as the line "Images and words" is sung in it. For the grand finale, comes the longest track on the album Learning to Live, clocking in at eleven minutes thirty. And a good finale it is. It starts with a synth riff from Kevin Moore, then the guitar, drums and bass kick in, and the song builds and sets a quite eerie and epic atmosphere. The vocals start out quite restrained, but they too build up and LaBrie actually screams at a point. After a while, the atmosphere changes into a happier one, but this doesn't last long, and it's back to the rather eerie mood for an extended instrumental section lasting throughout almost the entire rest of this song, with only a few lines of vocals at certain points. This instrumental also includes an altered version of the main theme from Wait for Sleep, and thus the song seems to serve as a conclusion. Which makes sense, being the last tracks. Overall, this album is outstanding and scores a perfect 10/10. With great, often uplifting melodies, advanced structure and composition, brilliant vocal performance, amazing keyboard work and great guitar and drum playing, and some very unique bass playing from Myung, it is definitely one of my favorite Dream Theater albums, possibly the favorite. Track listing: 1: Pull Me Under (8:12) 2: Another Day (4:23) 3: Take the Time (8:20) 4: Surrounded (5:30) 5: Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper (9:32) 6: Under a Glass Moon (7:03) 7: Wait for Sleep (2:32) 8: Learning to Live (11:30)

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AkselJ Newbie

AkselJ

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Re: Images and Words - Dream Theater (1992) Heh, thanks, it's my first album review, actually :) I really want to learn to play all this stuff on guitar/piano/synth. I'm working on Wait for Sleep, which is epic. It changes time signature after every bar through the main riff :P

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jerometwain Newbie

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It's impossible for me to be objective about this album. This album is one of the reasons I listen to metal today. Every single minute of this album is sheer perfection. It's a shame that they weren't able to reach these levels in the following albums, but I think any band would be happy to have one CD like this in their career. Pure art.

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