Images And Words - Dream Theater

The sophisticated and enchanting music of New York’s Dream Theater hangs on the precipice of my patience when it comes to music meeting art: the band’s self-styled progressive metal sound has been in constant evolution since this 1992 debut, but for all the bombastic overblown intricacies and contrasting simplicity of some of their later albums, ‘Images and Words’ remains their most popular and enjoyable offering, with the perfect balance of song styles acting as an excellent introduction to a very interesting and worthwhile band. STYLE Dream Theater was: James LaBrie – vocals John Petrucci – guitars John Myung – ...

Both critics and fans struggle to precisely define Dream Theater’s style because, like all great music, it represents bits taken from lots of different genres arranged into something that doesn’t particularly resemble anything that’s been done before (or since). Recurrently, this stuff is classified as “progressive-metal”, but the connotations of that generalisation won’t prepare you for Images and Words. This album – the debut of the latter-era Dream Theater line-up (which boasted an operatically-trained vocalist in James LaBrie) – was released a shade over ten years ago now and is still widely regarded as the ...

Although this band has been together for years it was this 1992 album ‘Images and Words’ that was the initial eye-opener for me. The album itself contains some excellent compositions that really boost the thought provoking lyrics sung by first rate vocalist James Labrie. There really isn’t a bad song on this album. In hindsight this is largely a heavier guitar/keyboard laden album than their more recent ones with the possible exception of the beautiful piano/vocal track ‘wait for sleep’, a song which suitably demonstrates the bands lighter, more sensitive side and ultimately lends the album a well balanced feel. ...