Dream Theater

Falling Into Infinity (EastWest Records)

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 (between “Slight Incision” and “Gaping Wound”)

The latest from Dream Theater is an ambitious, progressive rock album that should provide the band with tons of new fans... if it gets the right type of airplay. The music is more commercially accessible than most of their past material but still retains the band’s sound and musical intricacies. John Petrucci (guitars), John Myung (bass), Mike Portnoy (drums) and Derek Sherinian (keyboards) provide some of the most astute and competent arrangements of 1997 and James LaBrie’s vocals are as strong as ever. On Falling Into Infinity, the band tries to straddle the line between their underground past and their commercial future. The trouble with this however, is that it’s too commercial for fans of their older material but not commercial enough for the radio listeners. A song like ‘You Not Me’ is probably the direction the band wanted to follow, and this is indeed a strong, radio-friendly song that remains at least somewhat heavy. ‘Burning My Soul’ and ‘Just Let Me Breathe’ are in the same vein, and if the entire album were like these three, we’d have a success. Unfortunately, most of the other songs aren’t as heavy and certainly don’t have any immediate hooks. Dream Theater is still churning out GIT textbook music, only of a softer variety. ‘Peruvian Skies’ is one of the better tracks and features some interesting melodies and a decent solo section. Likewise, there’s no knocking ‘Hell’s Kitchen,’ an instrumental with some ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ (Rush) qualities. But ‘Lines In The Sand’ (featuring Doug Pinnick of King’s X on backing vocals) and ‘Trail Of Tears’ are a bit too long (12 and 13 minutes, respectively) to grab the listener, and ‘Hollow Years’ and ‘Take Away The Pain’ sound like they could be used by Casey Kasem as ‘Long Distance Dedications.’ These are pure VH-1 songs, plain and simple. And I won’t even mention ‘Anna Lee,’ which could have been the B-side on Elton John’s Princess Diana single. Falling would be a good album by a different group with an adult contemporary following. Get this one if you must, just realize that it’s not a metal album, and barely a hard rock album.

—Goat