Dream Theater wows its enthusiastic crowd

Progressive rock band Dream Theater mesmerized its audience Oct. 29 at The Warehouse in Toronto. The Long Island-based quintet displayed its incredible technical ability during this stop on its first full tour in over two years.

Boston’s Big Wreck opened the show, combining funky basslines and classic shredding guitar solos with an alternative rock sound.

The lead singer varied his sound throughout the band’s seven-song set, often sounding like a cross between Dave Matthews and Bush’s Gavin Rossdale. While they were pretty good for an opening band, their style didn’t fit well with the more refined headliners.

At the start of Dream Theater’s performance, the theme music from the movie “A Clockwork Orange” began to play over the speakers. Moments later, keyboardist Derek Sherinian took his place on the stage and broke into the opening bars of “Lines in the Sand,” a 12-minute mini-epic from the band’s new album, “Falling Into Infinity.”

Musical mix

Sherinian and guitarist John Petrucci constantly explored new melodic directions, jumping between the hard-rocking “Under a Glass Moon” and “Burning My Soul,” to the emotional “Voices” and “Take Away My Pain,” a song Petrucci had recently written and dedicated to his late father.

Singer James LaBrie was in great form. He had the crowd chanting along with the band’s fast and furious jab at the music industry, “Just Let Me Breathe,” and sent a chill up its collective spine with the passionate “Scarred,” from Dream Theater’s previous album, 1994’s “Awake.”

Petrucci occasionally joined LaBrie on backup vocals. While he added another dimension in harmonizing, sometimes he seemed to give support to the fact that the guitar is really his true calling.

Bassist John Myung provided a steady foundation for the rest of the band, often coming to the forefront to add his own melodic contributions with his thick-sounding six-string bass. For “New Millennium,” from “Falling Into Infinity,” he even took out the rarely-seen Chapman Stick, a 12-stringed instrument similar to a bass that is played by tapping, rather than plucking the strings.

Animal

Drummer Mike Portnoy was a monster all night. He often resembled Animal from “The Muppet Show” behind his huge Tama drum set, hitting everything within reach at lightning speed and incredible precision. Portnoy was also the band’s cheerleader, keeping the crowd clapping and singing along constantly while engaging in the usual theatrics of stick-flipping and cymbal-spinning.

The band mixed its selection of songs well for the concert. The members went back to their first album, 1989’s “When Dream and Day Unite,” to play the instrumental “The Ytse Jam” (a reversal of the band’s original name, Majesty), during which Portnoy had a brief but entertaining drum solo.

They played their best-known song, the driving “Pull Me Under,” from their 1992 breakthrough album “Images and Words.” The band also interspersed throughout the concert bits and pieces of their 23-minute magnum opus “A Change of Seasons” from their 1995 EP.

Dream Theater capped off the night with the crowd favorite “Metropolis.” They finished off the song with teasers from two of their classics, “A Fortune In Lies” and “Lie” and sent the crowd into an eruption of cheers with a piece of Metallica’s “One.”