Progressive rock’s sustaining champions get implausibly extensive while gracing a stage that has seen more than its fair pot of noodles. It’s a nerdy job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Dream Theater

Live At Budokan (Warners)

Never mind how long Dream Theater spend on stage (and judging by this three-CD Live At Budokan it’s a bloody long time), how long do they spend rehearsing this stuff? Recorded at Japan’s most famous and namechecked venue, the collection kicks off with ‘As I Am’ (seven minutes and 25 seconds), which is followed by ‘This Dying Soul’ (11’ 44”) and ‘Beyond This Life’ (19’ 37”). Track four, ‘Hollow Years’, offers only a paltry 9’ 18”, thus halting an upward spiral that, come the end of disc three of this collection, might have seen Dream Theater performing the first 24-hour prog-metal tune.

These opening salvos are not simple matters, either. The entire Dream Theater credo is contained within each of them: they bristle with the complex time signatures, bombastic riffs and nerdy twiddlings that have sustained and nourished fans of this maligned genre for a decade or more. Thus, from Disc One of Live At Budokan we can assume that: 1) Dream Theater rehearse for approximately the amount of time that space probes take to reach Mars, and 2) they are extremely accomplished at what they do.

It’s point two that we should dwell upon. Since the band’s debut, When Dream & Day Unite, in 1989, Dream Theater – along with their solo spinoffs and side-projects – have almost singlehandedly sustained a genre. They could not have accomplished such a feat without delivering – and in spades – what their public lusted after. Here are men who grew up through the defining years of both progressive rock and heavy metal; men who loved Yes, and heard the echo of that band’s instrumental fetishism in the contemporary metal played by Steve Vai and his ilk. The Dream Theater guys very probably liked King Crimson and Queensrÿche. DT’s definition of ‘progressive’ was to take the above influences and then maximise them. Hence the vast and deathless songs, the many and varied instrumentals, the deep and incomprehensible lyrics.

And while Dream Theater existed within their tightly defined field and for their compact yet devoted audience, progressive music did what its name suggested it might: it progressed. There is a strong argument to be made that Radiohead are a progressive rock band. There’s an equally strong one that Muse are, too. Both bands have breached the mainstream with some extreme music.

So what context does such success offer Dream Theater, with their three-CD live albums and War & Peace tunes? Has it sent a lifeboat towards them, a promise of widescale commercial acceptance? Probably not. As seductive as some of their musicianship is (occasionally, as with ‘This Dying Soul’, for example, they’re the equal of a Rush or a Yes), as powerful as sections of ‘Beyond This Life’ and that hardy perennial ‘Pull Me Under’ are, Dream Theater are at heart a cult band. Their stall is set out. Those who love them will rejoice in everything about Live At Budokan, because Dream Theater fulfil their remit joyously. They are fully committed to their music, and they play it with the merciless excellence of the zealot. Sections of ‘Stream Of Consciousness’ and ‘In The Name Of God’ demand and receive some astonishing precision. DT’s message is a simple one: like it or lump it. And such a manifesto is hugely admirable in an industry built on compromise. Fans should celebrate the band’s bloody-mindedness and enjoy this powerful set.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Jon Hotten