Dream Theater

A View From The Top Of The World (InsideOut Music)

Rating: 9/10

The prog metallers unleash 15th studio album

With seven tracks and a one-hour-11minute running time, Dream Theater’s latest album is everything we’d expect from the band: great interplay, angular rhythms, fantastical lyrics and blazing solo passages. There’s a fine art to guitar and keyboard arranging, which John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess have crafted via unison lines, swapping lead/comp roles and timbre-balancing from soft to aggressive. Opener Alien has a frenetic, all-blazing intro with melodic shred solos featuring Petrucci’s Music Man and Mesa/Boogie gear before Rudess goes ‘Jan Hammer on steroids’. Answering The Call starts with low B moshing and precise 16th lines before James LaBrie’s vocals enter. There’s a great wah solo later, too. The 10-minute Sleeping Giant is quite a sonic journey and talk of an eight-string Music Man Majesty guitar this year suggests that Awaken The Master is where you’ll find it here – the riffing is spectacularly low! [JS]

Standout track: Awaken The Master

For fans of: Liquid Tension Experiment, Queensrÿche