Dream Theater

The Marquee, London

Friday, April 23

Rating: 3 out of 5 (Stable)

Once again, Dream Theater sell out the Marquee, bringing their successful haul around the UK to a close. Once again, everybody seems to love them. And once again, the question has to be, ‘Why is this happening, exactly?’.

The answer is very probably that Dream Theater are offering the absolute antithesis of that rather popular Seattle thing. Grunge is often careless in its approach; musicians hammer away at fuzzed- up fretboards, with nary a thought for root notes, phrygian scales or precise harmonics. The fact that they don’t give a toss about theory is seen as one of their strengths and becomes part of their image, reflected by the increasingly trendy slacker look.

So along come Dream Theater, with their expensive chords, their operatic vocals, their overwhelming emphasis on musical virtuosity, and their lovely shirts. Naturally, the oppressed Prog Rock fans, together with anyone becoming increasingly desperate for a new Queensrÿche album, are like pigs in shit. They can’t get enough of it!

Viewed in this light, the fact that Dream Theater’s Images And Words album has gone Gold in the States is quite understandable. Tonight, they play the same set as they did recently at this very same venue, except for an additional, nameless instrumental: The sound’s clearer, and the band’s consummate technical polish seems even less feasible than it did three weeks ago.

Metallica’s faithful can even get into bits of Dream Theater. Their first US single, ‘Pull Me Under’, has not only the most noticeable chorus, but Hetfieldian guitar chunks.

So why do Dream Theater achieve a mere ‘stable’ rating? Because at present, they really can’t write songs all that coherently. Better ones are very much the order of the day.

—Jason Arnopp