Review Summary: Where Dream Theater's journey truly begins...
After failing to leave a ripple in the progressive music pond with their debut, Dream Theater knew it was time for reevaluation and, more importantly, development. Metaphorically,
When Dream and Day Unite was a fragment of a pebble while its follow-up,
Images and Words, was a colossal boulder. Thanks to a number of welcome changes,
Images and Words completely rejects the concept of "sophomore slump," becoming both a tremendous improvement over its predecessor and a progressive metal milestone.
Opening with the band's most popular song, "Pull Me Under" is all one needs to understand that this will be a much different creature than the previous album. Immediately clear is the bolstered production, allowing the music to sound clean and lively. Where the instruments in
When Dream and Day Unite suffocated within their thin atmosphere,
Images and Words inhales and exhales like a guru deep in meditation.
This praise extends to then-new frontman James LaBrie, who's long come under heavy criticism. At this point in his (and the band's) career, he was in top form, hitting high notes with a seemingly passionate ease. His performance is right in-line with the album's generally upbeat tempo, but points like "Wait for Sleep" and the beginning of "Surrounded" allow everyone to breathe a little. Although, for an album that's technically metal, Images and Words has an overall sense of elation and unwinding.
Listeners who've gone without a little
Images and Words in their lives (shame on you) needn't worry about the album sticking to what seems like a basic format, based on the first two tracks. "Pull Me Under" and "Another Day" might fall back on choruses and other refrains, but the rest of the album is less conventionally structured. During tracks like "Metropolis, Pt. 1" and "Learning to Live" we get a taste of Dream Theater unleashed, but not in the same vein as 2002's
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, or even
Images and Words' immediate successor,
Awake.
Images and Words is quick to find its pacing, even though it's ever-changing. The strut begins to recede during the second half, after the speedy virtuosity in "Take the Time" and "Metropolis, Pt. 1." In particular, the early minutes of "Learning to Live" showcase an influence from Queensryche before providing a riff not unlike those on
Awake. One could spend hours picking out the touches found in other, earlier progressive acts, but
Images and Words secures an identity for itself as the best the genre had to offer during the 90's.
