|
Another
tour, another triple live disc and double live DVD! Celebrating their
20th anniversary, playing the final show of the tour on home turf April
1st in Radio City
Music Hall in New York City in front of 6000 ecstatic Dream Theater
fans, they deliver a journey thru times...
Kicking
things off with 2 songs from their latest album "Octavarium"
before playing the very first song they ever wrote (back in the days
when they were known as Majesty): "Another Won", leading into
a run-down of their entire back catalogue, playing at least one song
from each of their studio albums.
I
had the opportunity to see them earlier on on this tour, and must admit
I liked the set a lot better in Hamburg, than the songs chosen in NY.
They play the entire "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" with a
huge orchestra - yeah all 41 minutes of it, and do also play the entire
"Octavarium" track (26 minutes), which means those 2 songs
take up more than an hour...
For
some strange reason they've picked "Raised the Knife" from the
'Falling into Infinity' era, a song that's not even on the album, but
only available on a fan-club CD. Off course it's cool to hear songs like
"Innocence Faded" and "Vacant" live, 2 songs that
very seldom makes it into the set. Even though I find it rather strange
that they've chosen the ballad off their hardest and heaviest album 'Train
of Thought'. Not playing "Pull me under" must be new to the
guys as well... and I miss it! But to get "Metropolis" with a
big orchestra more than makes up for it - awesome!
Never
mind these small hick-ups; this is still a very, very good live
recording from my favorite band! The orchestra adds a new dimension to
this brilliant band sound live, and fans like me will love this release
as much as any of their previous ones...
The DVD contains the entire show as well as a very good
documentary, where John Myung, who actually speaks!, Mike Portnoy and
John Petrucci returns to Berklee, where it all began. There's even some
cool Majesty footage from 1986. All of the former members come to word -
with the exception of Kevin
Moore
- and the docu is really insightful.
There's also a pretty funny Octavarium animation done by a Finnish fan
and 3 songs live: "Another Day" (Live in Tokyo, 1993 - with
Kevin Moore), "The Great Debate" (Live in Bucharest, 2002) and
"Honor Thy Father" (Live in Chicago, 2005 - awesome live, even
though James LaBrie does have his problems with the more aggressive
songs live).
All
in all you get great value from Dream Theater in almost normal fashion,
and I am sure fans will swallow these releases like fine nectar...
|
