Dream Theater

Live At The Marquee

(Atco advance tape)

Rating: 4 out of 5 (Killer!)

It’s often amusing to listen to a live album recorded in a club, knowing the true capacity of the venue in question, and to discover that the crowd has been mysteriously swelled by a couple of thousand in the mix. Dream Theater’s album, recorded on the second of their Marquee shows earlier this year, is one such album that suffers in this manner, but this doesn’t really detract from the overall enjoyment to be gained here.

Dream Theater have come an awful long way from their days as Majesty. In fact, they’ve come an awful long way since splitting with the vocalist who recorded first album When Dream And Day Unite in 1989, after which they recruited James LaBrie. An inspired choice.

Live At The Marquee might feature just six tracks, but the shortest of these is just over five minutes, so we’re hardly talking EP-type standards here.

Opening with the direct touch that is ‘Metropolis’, it’s immediately clear that the interplay between Kevin Moore’s keyboards and the guitar of John Petrucci comes very close to knocking Angel’s legendary Giuffria/Meadows combination for six.

‘A Fortune In Lies’ (from current album Images And Words’ elder brother, the aforementioned When Dream And Day Unite) follows in rather frenzied fashion before Dream Theater slow the pace down with the previously unreleased instrumental, ‘Bombay Vindaloo’. You can almost feel the curry welling up inside you, as the song envelopes your senses!

‘Surrounded’, meanwhile, offers more balance, reflecting DT’s more delicate side, not to mention delivering the token Pomp cliché, in the form of using the words ‘ivory tower’ at least once!

Dream Theater choose to round off the record with the couplet of ‘Another Hand’/’The Killing Hand’ (the latter track also culled from the first album) and the exquisite and quite spiritual tale that is ‘Pull Me Under’. Death by Pomp!

Dream Theater return to these shores in October. This should keep you ticking over nicely till then.

—Dave Reynolds