Dream Theater

Octavarium (Atlantic)

Dream Theater are one of those bands who operate brilliantly within the bounds of their own internal logic. Set in a wider context – i.e. the real world – they might appear utterly insane. That they are dedicated and driven is beyond argument. To play some of the music they play requires quite extraordinary skill, and on Octavarium it is honed and leavened to a lush and impenetrably hard sheen. And yet they still sound like the elite music students that they were when they formed in the mid-1980s.

Octavarium is not an album that will suddenly wake up the wider world to Dream Theater. Erstwhile fans of Mötley Crüe will not be singing the complex melodies of ‘Panic Attack’ to their giggling girlfriends. Delirious goths won’t take to the streets with ‘The Root Of All Evil’ on their lips. But followers of Dream Theater will sink into its depths as blissfully as they would a hot tub filled with cheerleaders.

Sacrificed Sons is a wonderful example of the band at their best, the instrumental section at the end as taut and powerful as anything they’ve produced. ‘I Walk Beside You’ gives James LaBrie a break from yodelling along to the riffs, providing him instead with something approaching a trad-rock melody. Naturally, there is plenty of the more usual devout prog metal too: ‘The Root of All Evil’, ‘Panic Attack’ and ‘Never Enough’ all jolt percussively along, alternating between grinding thrash and more grandiose keyboard sections.

But it’s not until ‘Octavarium’, the final track, that the light and shade of some acoustic instruments penetrate the muso darkness and, too late, other, more tantalising vistas open up. It would’ve been nice had Dream Theater spent some time exploring them.