Originally published in North Jersey Herald & News newspaper · January 1999
Dream Theater Fans Should Be Please With New Live CD
By Don Diiorio
Review1 min read
Dream Theater
Once In A LIVEtime (Elektra)
The band is calling this double live CD the “ultimate gift to their fans.” It may seem like a self-serving statement but considering all the bootlegs floating around among the band’s cultish following, this well-produced set will no doubt be greeted with much enthusiasm among the converted.
There aren’t any big surprises to be found in the set. It’s typical Dream Theater, which means it’s very good, full of virtuoso performances and packed with enough musical ideas to sustain a recording twice as long. Also impressive is the fact that it was all recorded at one show in Paris rather than culled from multiple performances, as is the norm for most releases of this sort.
Not surprisingly, the material is culled heavily from their last release, 1997’s Falling Into Infinity. Longtime fans might be disappointed to see that no songs from their debut record of ’89, When Dream And Day Unite, made it onto this set, save for the perennially played instrumental, ‘Ytse Jam’ and just the opening bars of ‘A Fortune In Lies’, which closes the recording.
Interestingly, the band frames the proceedings with its epic ‘A Change Of Seasons’, weaving the multi-part suite in and out of the set with clever segues. The band uses the same tact throughout the set to create long multi-song movements, as in the 24 minute run-on comprising ‘Scarred’, ‘The Darkest Of Winters’, ‘Ytse Jam’ and Mike Portnoy’s monster drum solo.
Down points are few. The quote from Pink Floyd’s ‘Have A Cigar’ in the middle of ‘Peruvian Skies’, as well as the one from Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ sound a bit forced, like a trying-too-hard attempt at being clever. And John Petrucci’s guitar solo, while pyrotechnically amazing, doesn’t quite have the musically sublime quality that previous solos, like the one he used to do at the end of the still unreleased ‘To Live Forever’ did.
These minor quibbles aside, the set makes for another stunning DT release and fans of progressive rock/metal would do well to pick it up.