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No idea when tickets are going on sale, but I'm going to keep a close eye on it. I had tickets to their Toronto show a year ago, but I caught a nasty case of shingles and had to give them to someone at work.
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Feb 24, 2017 00:46
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I'm not a big PoS fan but I don't see how writing lyrics about God is pretentious, or even particularly proggy?
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Feb 25, 2017 13:57
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No Portland?? Stick Men all but confirmed one date in Portland when they were in town a few weeks ago. This sucks.
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Feb 25, 2017 20:15
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Seventh Arrow posted:No idea when tickets are going on sale, but I'm going to keep a close eye on it. I had tickets to their Toronto show a year ago, but I caught a nasty case of shingles and had to give them to someone at work. Looks like Toronto tickets are on sale this coming Friday. I'll be there shingles or not
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Feb 25, 2017 21:09
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Congratulations to Adrian Belew (and Daniel Rowland) on writing the score for Piper, 2017 Oscar for Best Animated Short!
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Feb 27, 2017 04:54
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God damnit A Change Of Seasons just came on in some Spotify playlist and I just remembered the same band made The Astonishing, and that was a real thing that occurred.
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Mar 1, 2017 10:45
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What's the goonsensus for the drop off point in quality for dream theater? I think it's Six Degrees.
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Mar 2, 2017 08:50
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I think even their best albums are pretty uneven. Scenes from a Memory is my favorite by them, and even that has some awful tracks. I was bored with them by Systematic Chaos, and haven't listened to their last three albums. I tried listening to Train of Thought recently, and I have no idea why I used to think that was a good album other than I used to listen to a lot less metal. I still really like This Dying Soul (and it's my favorite part of the Twelve Steps suite), but none of the rest does anything for me anymore.
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Mar 2, 2017 09:32
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SFAM loving works for me in a way that no album of theirs has or ever will again. And this isn't a nostalgia thing either, I picked it up on a whim for 3 hour road trip and the whole time I was air-keyboarding the ridiculous solos and falsettoing my way through Fatal Tragedy.Rollersnake posted:I think even their best albums are pretty uneven. Scenes from a Memory is my favorite by them, and even that has some awful tracks. I was bored with them by Systematic Chaos, and haven't listened to their last three albums. Can I guess and say Through Her Eyes and One Last Time? Maybe The Spirit Carries On Which I unironically enjoy For what it's worth, everything from Regression -> Beyond This Life are like, unimpeachable in my opinion. Then the back end has Home and the Dance of Eternity which are solid numbers. algebra testes fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Mar 2, 2017 |
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Mar 2, 2017 10:07
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I fell off sometime before Portnoy left the band and have listened to everything since then between 1-3 times. I remember quite liking their self-titled for the three hours or so I spent on it. Dream Theater's never been a band with a 100% hit rate, but they've still got quite a few I'd give a 80%-95%, and that's still pretty good. Images and Words, Awake, the remixed version of Falling Into Infinity, SFAM, and the first disc of Six Degrees minus the weird abortion song are all pretty great.
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Mar 2, 2017 10:17
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Astrochicken posted:What's the goonsensus for the drop off point in quality for dream theater? There isn't one because they've always been awful
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Mar 2, 2017 10:37
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It was surprising listening to them again after a 10 year hiatus. I was huge on Dream Theater from ~16-19. They defined high school for me and made me insufferable to pretty much everyone. I had a huge crush on a girl named Victoria and creeped her the F out when I gave her SFAM. (She actually listened to it, which I considered a miracle at the time.) After getting into various music circles where Dream Theater was the uncoolest band to like ever, I dropped them pretty quickly. Still kept my 70s prog/canterbury/zeuhl records around because those were just obscure enough to pass. I can still enjoy listening to most Dream Theater, though many tracks have inched completely into "so bad it's good" territory for me. The lyrics are so much worse than I remembered them being. I'm pretty sure I even got emotional at SFAM as a 17 year old. The earlier you go, the better they get I think though. I like the dorky sci-fi/fantasyish prog lyrics of their first two albums. The most striking difference I notice now is how frequently not-good the composition is. The various song bits aren't as well glued together as I gave them credit for in high school. This isn't as noticeable in their earlier stuff. Weirdly, the concept album half of Six Degrees is alright in that regard still. LaBrie's voice now sounds immensely grating to me when he's belting it. Some of the sonics in tracks like Disappear I still really like. Haven't followed prog metal since unless you count Pain of Salvation. I kind of want to get back into it. That Symphony X Odyssey song still rules.
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Mar 2, 2017 12:48
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Pull Me Under kinda holds up when you put it up against other hard rock singles from the early 90's. Probably not better than Jet City Woman, but I'd give it an edge over some of the stuff Warrant was doing. Is it as good as Keep The Faith by Bon Jovi? Only time will tell. BigFactory fucked around with this message at 13:06 on Mar 2, 2017 |
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Mar 2, 2017 13:02
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Man, go listen to Beyond This Life right now if you're seriously in the "Dream Theater were always awful" camp and aren't just opposed to metal altogether. Or Space-Dye Vest. Though the latter is kind of cheating since "Dream Theater were always awful except for Kevin Moore" also seems to be a fairly common opinion. Can we all at least agree that OSI's first album is really good?
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Mar 2, 2017 13:34
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I like BIgFactory's ringing endorsement but, thinking about it, even though I haven't actually heard a Warrant song in over 15 years but I still summon the chorus to "Cherry Pie" in my head, and its not that bad. on the other hand I cannot recall any decent DT tunes or melodies or anything at all.
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Mar 2, 2017 15:02
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Dream Theater sort of suffer from Lord of the Rings syndrome: that thing where, if you were born anywhere after like 1970, nothing Tolkien did seems that original or impressive because people have picked apart and reused so many pieces in so many different ways that there's absolutely nothing you haven't heard before. When they were doing things nobody had heard before alongside Fates Warning and Queensryche, they had just that right mix of progressiveness and approachability that allowed a hundred different bands to plant their ideas like dandelion seeds, often doing a better job, as opposed to stuff that's undoubtedly higher-concept, better-composed and less well-aped, like Operation: Mindcrime. Every nerd with a guitar in the early '90s wanted their own version of The Ytse Jam. I don't listen to DT much these days except for my occasional nostalgia listens of their first four or five albums, but I'm grateful to them for Haken, who have carried that flame a lot better than DT ever could.
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Mar 2, 2017 16:44
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OSI is good but the third album is by far the best IMO. If you delete all the midtempo cheesefest ballads, dream theater were acceptable up until Octavarium. The last two albums are worse than the demos portnoy myung and petrucci made in college in every single way, including the bass and drum production somehow They have a literal beast in John Myung and they made him play root notes for two hours on the astonishing, petrucci and rudess should be in the hauge for that. The new jelly jam album had some nice grooves on it tho. Also has anyone heard Neil Morse's simulation of a dream or whatever it's called? I heard it's solid but it's not on Spotify and I don't know if I want to take the risk
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Mar 2, 2017 16:55
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tote up a bags posted:OSI is good but the third album is by far the best IMO. It's pretty good if you're into the Transatlantic/Neal Morse/Spocks' Beard sound at all. Lyrics are his usual, if you don't mind those you should be fine. I think it's his strongest release in ~10 years or so since Sola and One. Much more dense with proggy bits and light on the quasi-worship ballads.
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Mar 2, 2017 17:19
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Vulture Culture posted:Dream Theater sort of suffer from Lord of the Rings syndrome: that thing where, if you were born anywhere after like 1970, nothing Tolkien did seems that original or impressive because people have picked apart and reused so many pieces in so many different ways that there's absolutely nothing you haven't heard before. I don't really see the comparison. Tolkien was practically the inventor of the modern fantasy genre. Dream Theater didn't invent anything, nor really did bands like Queensryche or Fates Warning for that matter. Heavy prog already existed, there's nothing innovative about what people started calling "prog metal" in the 80's and 90', there's little there that hadn't already been done on albums like King Crimson's Red or even In the Court.... in terms of what was going on the 80's, even Master of Puppets was more progressive and interesting metal album than anything those dork bands came up with
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Mar 2, 2017 17:24
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Earwicker posted:I like BIgFactory's ringing endorsement but, thinking about it, even though I haven't actually heard a Warrant song in over 15 years but I still summon the chorus to "Cherry Pie" in my head, and its not that bad. The Warrant song that came to mind as being out around the same time as Pull Me Under was Uncle Tom's Cabin, which wasn't as good a song as Cherry Pie.
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Mar 2, 2017 18:07
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Earwicker posted:I don't really see the comparison. Tolkien was practically the inventor of the modern fantasy genre. Dream Theater didn't invent anything, nor really did bands like Queensryche or Fates Warning for that matter. Heavy prog already existed, there's nothing innovative about what people started calling "prog metal" in the 80's and 90', there's little there that hadn't already been done on albums like King Crimson's Red or even In the Court.... Okay, yeah, you can point at King Crimson's Red and Rush's A Farewell to Kings and all this other stuff that they clearly were influenced by, but there's no denying that they threw this poo poo into a sound that was undeniably theirs, and countless numbers of bands have thought them important or influential enough to just directly rip them off without even trying to add anything new of their own to the sound. Spend enough time hearing bits and pieces of all the poo poo that came after, and what's left of their approach that hasn't been done to death? e: everything post-2000 still sucks rear end Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 18:58 on Mar 2, 2017 |
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Mar 2, 2017 18:54
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I think there's a bit of a difference between taking centuries-old folklore and transforming it into an approachable and marketable modern genre of fiction (which does count as a form of invention imo), and taking a sound from 10 years previous and just making it worse. Most of the folklore Tolkein drew from isn't even directly readable by a modern audience without first studying Middle English and other older forms of the language. There is real value in how he made these stories accessible to modern generations. That same discrepancy does not exist between the heavy prog of the 70's and the so called "prog metal" of the 80's, they didn't provide any new value to the music they just made it cheesier. They didn't even make it more accessible, "21st Century Schizoid Man" is still a better radio friendly song than anything DT ever wrote, while also managing to be more progressive and more metal. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Mar 2, 2017 |
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Mar 2, 2017 19:06
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I just tried listening to Pull Me under for the first time in 2 and a half decades and I had trouble getting through the intro. Not as catchy as I remember. 3/10, would rather be listening to Collective Soul or Toad The Wet Sprocket.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:42
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A human heart posted:There isn't one because they've always been awful They got chops for days, but all the best prog bands could still write a great three-to-five minute song if they wanted to, they'd just put it alongside their twenty-minute epics. DT has never had an idea that they want to play for less than six minutes. They're a band in need of an editor.
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Mar 2, 2017 20:42
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Scenes and awake i played the hell out of in high school but at the time of its release six degrees represented a shocking fall from grace to me. That stem cell research song.. I can't be bothered to see if the old stuff holds up. Best to keep it preserved in memory because it still holds a place in my heart. They're not really comparable but I still enjoy me some Chroma Key, though probably more for nostalgic reasons than anything.
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Mar 2, 2017 23:37
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Rollersnake posted:Man, go listen to Beyond This Life right now if you're seriously in the "Dream Theater were always awful" camp and aren't just opposed to metal altogether. I just did and it sounds corny and bad. The singing is lame, the riffs suck and the drat song is too long.
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Mar 3, 2017 00:59
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The thing with a lot of these prog metal guys is that theres a superficial aesthetic of being 'progressive' that like old death metal or thrash or whatever doesn't have, even though old death metal was probably more progressive in the sense of doing new things, and people value that aesthetic more than what the music actually did.
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Mar 3, 2017 01:11
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Dream theater has the bonus of being funny looking at least, especially the singer and the big lunkhead guitar player
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Mar 3, 2017 01:46
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A human heart posted:The thing with a lot of these prog metal guys is that theres a superficial aesthetic of being 'progressive' that like old death metal or thrash or whatever doesn't have, even though old death metal was probably more progressive in the sense of doing new things, and people value that aesthetic more than what the music actually did.
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Mar 3, 2017 03:06
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The only time I ever see anyone suggest that prog is actually supposed to be progressing music itself is in this thread or when people are dissing Dream Theater.
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Mar 3, 2017 03:35
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A human heart posted:The thing with a lot of these prog metal guys is that theres a superficial aesthetic of being 'progressive' that like old death metal or thrash or whatever doesn't have, even though old death metal was probably more progressive in the sense of doing new things, and people value that aesthetic more than what the music actually did. exactly, there's nothing about Dream Theater or Queensryche that is in any way more musically "progressive" than Metallica or Slayer.
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Mar 3, 2017 03:45
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Henchman of Santa posted:The only time I ever see anyone suggest that prog is actually supposed to be progressing music itself is in this thread or when people are dissing Dream Theater. There's a lot of people super into prog metal who will sneer at other kinds of metal because it's too simple or whatever, that's really what I mean
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Mar 3, 2017 05:27
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Earwicker posted:exactly, there's nothing about Dream Theater or Queensryche that is in any way more musically "progressive" than Metallica or Slayer. although if given the choice I'll choose "Operation: Mindcrime" over a DT album any day
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Mar 3, 2017 05:28
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Henchman of Santa posted:The only time I ever see anyone suggest that prog is actually supposed to be progressing music itself is in this thread or when people are dissing Dream Theater.
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Mar 3, 2017 06:33
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Vulture Culture posted:It's a weird standard, because terms like "modern art" have well-understood connotations beyond "art that is literally produced in modernity" "modern art" does refer to a particular period, it's not a style or genre. "progressive rock" originally referred to a style of rock that was at least in some sense musically progressive, the problem is it turned into a genre, and genres themselves stifle progression as they attract artists who intentionally try to remain within it. it's probably a bad idea in general to use genre names that sort of inherently pat themselves on the back, like "intelligent dance music"
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Mar 3, 2017 06:42
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Earwicker posted:it's probably a bad idea in general to use genre names that sort of inherently pat themselves on the back, like "intelligent dance music"
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Mar 3, 2017 06:44
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Vulture Culture posted:Or post- anything. Ugh. Television's Marquee Moon being considered post-punk when it slightly predates all of the seminal punk albums I can think of remains my favorite example of genre labels simply not meaning what they're supposed to. For years I've just made a mental distinction between "progressive rock" in the original intention of the term and "prog" as the genre. I have no problem with the coexistence of the two, but it does irritate me when people heap praise on the ones who sound sort of like '70s Yes (or whatever) while not caring about genuinely innovative music. Also this doesn't necessarily mean the band who sort of sounds like '70s Yes isn't good. And really these issues with genre labels, their usefulness, and their intent goes way beyond the scope of this thread. NEARfest, when it was around, seemed like the only American prog festival that was really devoted to the whole spectrum of what could be called progressive rock. I don't think it ever fully pleased anybody, but at least it wasn't another progressive rock festival exclusively devoted to symphonic rock. Rollersnake fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Mar 3, 2017 |
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Mar 3, 2017 07:31
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Most of the stuff in the genre that's actually progressive in some way tends to get other vague labels anyway, like "experimental" or "avant-rock." Everybody understands that you're a progressive rock/metal band even if you're playing stuff that's never transitioned musically past 1973.
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Mar 3, 2017 08:10
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It's the same with Alternative, Indie, Punk, or anything else like that. The genres/movements were named in a way that initially made sense, but couldn't possibly be taken literally after a certain point. They refer to what those artists were doing relative to what was happening at the time. Eventually that historical context disappears but the musical style remains.
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Mar 3, 2017 14:34
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King Crimson was one of my favirte bands in high school. Moonchild is the best
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