A Change of Seasons review

Dream Theater - A Change Of Seasons

Dream Theater secretes music that is so incredibly cliche you know exactly where it’s going on the first listen. The album starts off with a gentle acoustic ditty that past experience tells you is going to degenerate into asinine power chords. And after a minute or two... wow, mom, yet another shade of Metallica! Gradually the song progresses into the progressive category for which DT are famous. For those unaware, progressive music is wanker guitar rock played by pretentious people, usually fronted by a White Snake cum Pavoratti bastard with long hair. Admittedly, all of the members of DT know how to play their instruments, and they do neat tricks with tempo, scales, and all that shit. But the end result is an uninspired and long (the first song is 24 minutes) repetition of a musical form that was thoroughly exhausted by more talented people long ago. The rest of the album removes the thinly veiled attempts at creativity with covers of such incredible artists as Kansas, Deep Purple, and Journey.

Possibly the most amazing thing about DT is their ability to pull this all off with a straight face. They are so unfathomably pretentious that it pains me: the photograph on the back cover finds the gentlemen of DT clad all in black, cast in mood lighting, some staring off into the distance pondering the meaning of life while others strike dramatic poses. And the interior art... Enough! I cannot, and will not, dwell on this mierda any longer. They make wanker guitar out of an Elton John song and quote Robert Herrick’s “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” on the same album for Christ’s sake.