Dream Theater – Images And Words (Atco)

Saigon Kick – The Lizard (Third Stone/Atlantic)

Their first albums went nowhere and their second records faced a similar fate until late-breaking hits rescued these adventurous hard rock bands.

Dream Theater's epic, progressive metal has taken off with the unlikely hit ‘Pull Me Under’, which blends sweeping keyboards and vocals, ever-shifting tempos and bruising riffs. Much of the album is built around this E.L.P. meets Metallica sound, which can be quite dazzling in controlled doses.

However, Dream Theater often stretches what could have been spectacular 5-minute tracks into bloated 8-minute-plus epics. It shows the guys are great musicians, but it makes for a tiring, heavy-handed album overall. C

Sweet and simple is what worked for Florida's Saigon Kick. Their boisterous, inventive hard rock was ignored, but the delicate ballad ‘Love Will Find a Way’, with its simple acoustic guitar and vocals structure, has finally broken them. It's much like what happened with Extreme, with whom Saigon Kick are currently touring.

‘Love’ is atypical of Saigon Kick's volatile, guitar-driven sound and stands out like a sore thumb on The Lizard next to songs like the unsettling ‘Body Bag’, the crunching ‘Feel The Same Way’, or the sinister ‘God Of 42nd Street’. Folks looking for more nice songs like the breakthrough ballad are in for a rude awakening. A-

—Peter Atkinson