Dream Theater

Bangkok Thunder Dome, Thailand

27/9/17

View: awestruck

Celebrating 25 years of Images And Words, Dream Theater began with the recent ‘The Dark Eternal Night’, featuring bone-crunching riffage from John Petrucci and snarling vocals from James LaBrie. 2016’s ‘The Gift Of Music’ and ‘Our New World’ followed, while bassist John Myung paid tribute to Jaco Pastorius on ‘Portrait Of Tracey’, and the doomy ‘As I Am’ segued into a snatch of Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’. The album retrospective opened with the hard-hitting singalong, ‘Pull Me Under’, before the angelic ballad, ‘Another Day’. Petrucci got to grips with ‘Take The Time’, ‘Surrounded’ soared overhead euphorically, and drummer Mike Mangini provided a fine, captivating solo on ‘Metropolis Pt I’, while keyboardist Jordan Rudess added an intricate intro to ‘Wait For Sleep’. The complex ‘Learning To Live’ boasted more time-changes than a Southern Rail timetable, while a 25-minute grand finale featured the challenging ‘A Change Of Seasons’. Dream Theater to the Mad Max.

—Mark Taylor