Dream Theater Return With Awake

It’s been over two years since Dream Theater released their acclaimed second album, Images and Words, but the New York-based quintet (vocalist James LaBrie, keyboardist Kevin Moore, bassist John Myung, guitarist John Petrucci and drummer Mike Portnoy) have not had much down time since. As soon as they got back from a promotional tour of Korea for Images early this year, the guys began writing for their current disc, Awake. Says Mike, “This was the first time somebody put us in a room and we had to write an album. In the past we had so much time to prepare and rework material, but this time it was like, ‘OK, Go!’” Fortunately, the band were able to rise to the occasion. “We were under pressure, but it was so easy,” remarks Mike. “There was so much natural creative energy building up the whole time we were on tour, once we started writing, it was like bing bang boom! After a couple of months, our manager had to pull the plug and say ‘OK, let’s record, you have two hours’ worth of new material!’”

The resulting LP contains over 75 minutes of music, including a 20-minute three-song trilogy called “A Mind Besides Itself.” Mike marvels at the fact that a song like the epic “Metropolis” from Images and Words “took two months to write, just that song, rewriting, reworking, and arranging. This time around, we wrote all 11 songs in three months.” It’s obvious Dream Theater’s complexly progressive hard rock didn’t suffer from this method. In fact, Mike describes Awake as “taking what we had done with the last two albums to more extremes. The heavy stuff is much heavier, the moody dynamic stuff is really moody and dynamic. There’s a couple of songs that are a total departure from anything we’ve ever done. There are your typical long progressive songs, a couple of shorter, more simple songs. We just tried to balance everything out.”

Both Mike and John Petrucci agree that the most adventurous cut on Awake is “Space Dye Vest,” written entirely by Kevin. “He’s been listening to many different types of music, so when he came in to writing, he had a different concept of how a song should sound,” recalls John. “It’s just totally different than anything we’ve ever done... there’s a lot of dialogue, sampling, stuff like that.” Adds Mike, “It’s one of the few times that one of the members came in with a finished song and we liked it so much in his form that we didn’t really want to mess with it too much... It closes the album – just because it’s such a different song than anything else and it’s very, very moody.” At the other end of the spectrum is first single “Lie.” “It’s one of the more heavy and aggressive songs,” notes Mike. “We wanted to come out really heavy with the first track.” The band had difficulty choosing the lead-off single not only because there were so many good contenders but “We wanted a song that’s characteristic of how we want to be perceived,” says John. “The purpose of a single is, in a way, to advertise what the record’s going to be like.” “Hearing one song is not going to give the full picture by any means,” says Mike, “but hopefully it’ll give people a little taste of one of the sides of Dream Theater.”

For Awake’s production, the band chose Duane Baron and John Purdell, and recorded in Los Angeles for the first time. Though they’d wanted to record in New York after having spent so much time on the road, “It was the same situation for [Angelenos] John and Duane because they had spent nine months in Seattle working on the Heart record and then six months in Philadelphia working with Cinderella,” says Mike. ‘‘Duane had just had his first kid, so they were in the same boat as us. They weren’t home for a very long time either and they wanted to spend time with their families.” A compromise was reached wherein the band and producers came back to New York to mix the album. Even though the guys had to move all their equipment out to L.A. (John: “a lot of shipping and hassle”), this was the best recording experience they’d ever had. “It was great working with [Baron and Purdell],” claims John. “I think everybody felt we were all able to express ourselves a lot more genuinely. The experience from the road, and gathering gear and learning more about our sound and what we like and don’t like enabled us to be more prepared... the producers were totally into capturing that and being patient with us, so everybody walked away being completely satisfied with their performances and their sounds.”

After completing the album, Dream Theater took a couple of weeks off in early August, following Mike’s marriage to Meanstreak’s Marlene Abruzzo. (John took the opportunity to vacation in Disneyworld with his wife and Marlene’s bandmate, Rena.) The hardworking band then regrouped for some prerelease promotional work before Awake’s live debut at the Foundations Forum in September. They’ll no doubt be on the road well into the new year.

Photo caption: Mike and Marlene were married in New York on July 30, immediately following the mixing of Awake. Though slightly frazzled at press time by the convergence of these two events, Mike looked forward to a honeymoon cruise to Mexico and the Caribbean.

Photo caption: John Petrucci was responsible for the majority of lyrics on Awake. Unlike having to write music in a short period of time, he found “cramming lyrics was hard to do. There’s a lot of craftsmanship that goes into that. Even if you have the melodies and subject matter, there’s a lot of shaping words, etc.”

Photo caption: James, who’d joined Dream Theater after the music was already written for Images and Words, contributed lyrics to “Caught In A Web,” and collaborated with John P. on Awake’s vocal melodies.