Artist: Dream Theater
Title: Greatest Hits
Type: Album
Label: Rhino
They used to be great. I remember “Images and Words” and the overwhelming feeling of something new and unique, which accompanied listening to this album. Marillion with Rush on speed! Yeah. Then came, “Awake” and “Falling Into Infinity”. Still great. And then... The disaster happened. Over-engineered, technically flawless and equally boring “Metropolis pt.2 – Scenes From a Memory”. What a bad record, oh dear. Ok; back at the time it wasn't so crap, but with every listen it got worse and worse. It looked as if the amazing skills of the band took over their abilities to compose interesting stuff. From there, it got worse. James LaBrie singing falsettos instead of using his powerful voice, Petrucci playing like crazy, Rudess, Myung and Portnoy creating even more dense textures, more twisted sound but... No balls, people. “Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence”, “Train of Thought”, “Octavarium” and “Systematic Chaos”. Four of the crappiest, same sounding non-interesting albums in the history of progressive metal. I call it the Uroboros syndrome after a nice snake, who happened to eat its own tail. Blah! Play me “Images and Words” and go to hell. Above “Falling...” it was just never-ending, instrumental masturbation for weirdos.
To my big surprise, Dream Theater has never published any “Best of” compilation. Maybe due to the fact, that it's really hard to select the “best” songs out of band's first albums; they just rock in general. Unfortunately (or fortunately, dependable on perspective) the band has released much more material since then and now marketing plays a part – long-gone legend has just shown us a set of two CDs filled with stuff.
I am not sure why some of this material has been mixed again. Mixes are really bad; dry, lacking depth and very “raw”. That's applicable especially to the drums which sound like they are made of paper. The original tracks from 90's albums were mixed in a much better way. Despite that, the selection of songs is rather weird from a fan perspective; these are definitely the less unique, typical bits. For example, “Peruvian Sky” off “Falling Into Infinity”? Oh, give me a break. “Poor Vanessa”, indeed. Melted cheese flowing out of my speakers. Same with “Hollow Years” - what choice is that? Still, when you will look closely, you will realise that the tracks chosen almost match the radio rules for single songs; there's only one longer than 10 minutes (and no one is going to play it on air anyway) and most of them are much shorter so – in fact – there is a chance of broadcasting them. I think that was the purpose, because for die-hard fans it's worth nothing, they have all this music on individual albums anyway, and with a better mix quality. Cd's are followed – as usual – by a bad and pretentious cover. But this is common for 99% of metal releases, so I can't complain.
Is there anything I liked about this double album at all? Yes. The fact, that I have listened all the way through it and it didn't kill me. If you like Dream Theater, do not buy this, unless you want a 20 quid tea coaster. Buy the set if you work for a local radio and “Valerie” from Amy Winehouse is not ass-kicking enough anymore. If it was a DVD though, Amy would win. She's definitely better looking.
http://www.dreamtheater.net
Wojtek Kutyla
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