Arena Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Tuesday, 29th October 2024
A year (almost to the day) before this very gig, Dream Theater announced the return of founding drummer Mike Portnoy. This wasn’t news I took happily as I was upset by the trigger-happy fashion in which the band fired Mangini, their loyal drummer of 13 years. I also had concerns that the group had not fully parsed through the issues that caused them to split back in 2010, and whether Portnoy’s obsessiveness could once again become an issue.
But writing that article turned out to be a therapeutic way for me to process those negative feelings and store them outside of my mind, keeping them digital instead. Afterwards, I found a sense of calm acceptance and even began to look forward to what this new-old incarnation of one of my longtime favourite groups could offer.
A few months later, Dream Theater dropped their European 40th Anniversary tour dates and my mouth was agape when I discovered that they would be coming to Zagreb, the city I have called home for the last two years. The prog scene has been pretty dry since I moved here; I planned to attend a Uriah Heep concert back in 2022, but it was cancelled due to low ticket sales on that leg of their European tour. I could have seen Opeth the same year, but I chose not to because I hadn’t heard any of the band’s delightful prog-flavoured albums from the last decade by that point – I have now, and now sorely regret missing that opportunity, especially because the venue where they played is just five minutes walk from my front door. Apart from those, there haven’t been any concerts here in the progressive vein for me to enjoy, so you can understand why it seemed like a miracle that one of my all-time favourite groups would choose to stop here.
Anticipation for this tour was heavy, with fan theories about the setlist going out of control. Would Mike Portnoy be playing any music from the Mangini era, or would he eschew it? Could he even play some of the songs, given their extreme complexity? Would the group finally play the full Twelve-step Suite in order (and take up an hour of their setlist whilst doing so)? Would the new album be released ahead of the tour? Would the band even sound good anymore? The anticipation was rampant and occasionally a little toxic.
The tour artwork showed a set of four gigantic metal “X”s side by side in a desert setting, featuring a collection of items that related to all the band’s previous album covers (except, frustratingly, When Dream and Day Unite – the band’s underappreciated debut album). The four “X”s represented forty years of Dream Theater – I guess the band didn’t want to advertise this as their “XL” tour, the correct way to write forty in Roman numerals. Some simplified tour art showed a billboard with all 15 album covers side by side in a grid (this time, including When Dream and Day Unite) and I started to theorise that the band would be playing a song from each album, rather like they did for their twentieth-anniversary tour, represented on the Score live album.
I approached the impressive Arena Zagreb, the largest arena in Croatia, and considered how Eurovision would have been hosted here next May if Baby Lasagna had scored just a few more points. Although the venue (with its capacity of 23,000) was not sold out, it did seem packed, and I felt proud of the band for being able to justify playing at such a large venue.
While I would have opted to get as close to the stage as possible in earlier days by standing, I decided to give my legs a break for this three-hour concert and take the closest seat I could to the stage. I’m always interested in the demographics of who comes to these concerts, and I was surprised to find myself sitting next to a family of four: a mum, dad and two boys who looked roughly 8 and 10, kitted with noise-cancelling headphones to protect those delicate eardrums. Get them started early!
Metropolis – Pt. I
The concert got underway with one of the group’s most popular songs from their most popular album, Images and Words. After my last live experience with the group (where they only played one song from the 90s), I was surprised that the band went with such a route one pick to open the gig. But hey, why not give the people what they want?
The drummer in me was unleashed and I began air-drumming the entire thing. I realised, “This is how I enjoy this music, I won’t let my inhibitions keep me from enjoying it to the fullest.” It helped that I also had a beer to sup.
I noticed that, for the first time ever at a Dream Theater concert I had attended, Myung’s bass was pretty high in the mix, after being nearly inaudible for the band’s forty-year run. It would stay this way for the rest of the concert and I was grateful to be able to finally appreciate his performance.
Overture 1928 / Strange Déjà Vu
About as thematically on point, as you could get, the end of Metropolis – Pt. 1 gave way to the beginning of Metropolis – Pt. 2, otherwise known as Scenes from a Memory. Overture 1928 and Strange Déjà Vu feature a musical segue, so it would have been quite jarring for the band to play one song without the other. I didn’t see this as breaking my “one song per album” theory.
The Mirror
Trouble started. Although I had bought my seat with the intention of sitting through the concert, the punter in front of me seemed to have other ideas. As the heavy hitter from Awake (which pre-empted Portnoy’s Twelve-Step Suite thematically) got underway, he and his girlfriend decided to stand up – directly in my line of sight – and he began to record the song on his phone. I felt like pointing out to him that he would also have an unobstructed view of the song if he remained seated. Instead, I waited to see if he would sit at the end of the intro. He didn’t.
Reader, please don’t do this in a seated area. Especially in front of me.
At this point, I told him to sit down, and he instead moved down a seat while the girlfriend arched her back backwards as if that would help. As the classic boomed on, I felt I couldn’t really take it in as I was processing how rude the two muppets in front of me were. Technically, I could see the band, but not all of them at once; I had to peer around the girlfriend’s head if I wanted to look at what Petrucci was doing.
As I expected, the band concluded The Mirror by playing the Lie outro. The outro actually belongs to The Mirror, but the band decided to insert their Lie single into the outro of The Mirror for reasons beyond my comprehension.
Panic Attack
The twat in front of me ceased filming his favourite song and I hoped that he would intend to sit down next. As Panic Attack began playing, however, he kept standing and laughing with his girlfriend. I tapped him on the shoulder and more assertively told him to sit down. The girlfriend complied while he, intent on standing, moved down to an empty chair in the row ahead. Whatever, at least my line of sight was no longer obstructed. I felt glad to have surmounted my undeniably British inhibition to ask a stranger to do things, and successfully achieve my goal.
Panic Attack on the other hand… meh. It’s just not one of my favourites, and it feels like Dream Theater trying to imitate Muse. I couldn’t even remember the lyrics, it’s been that long since I listened to it.
Barstool Warrior
James introduced this song by saying “We’re going to go back a few years with this one”, misleading me into thinking they would play something from their first album. He really meant ‘a few’ years; at five years old, this is the second-most recent song in the set.
I’m sure a lot of eyes were on Portnoy, as this was the first Mangini-era song we would see him play. However, I couldn’t help but feel that this was a fairly easy song to play, and not that long either. It’s certainly not one I remembered very well, and I found this return to Distance over Time to be uneventful.
Hollow Years
It was time for a guitar spot by Petrucci, and I wasn’t certain what song was about to follow. On the tram ride over, I had been hoping to hear Lines in the Sand and believed I was about to get lucky. However, the song in question turned out to be the pop-flavoured Hollow Years from the same album, certainly allowing for a few minutes of respite for a weary Dream Theater.
Falling into Infinity was the first Dream Theater album I ever listened to and I knew all the words like the back of my hand, but I was uncertain about one thing. Hollow Years had not been played live since the band’s 2009/10 tour (their last with Portnoy), and back then they had decided to reinstate the extended bridges before the first two choruses that could be heard in the demo version. Would they do the same again now?
I was grinning ear to ear as soon as I heard the band comply. I’m sure there were a bunch of puzzled faces in the audience as James started to sing “In the writing of a tired hand…” but I made sure to sing along as loud as I could to make up for it. Frustratingly, the band didn’t also extend the final chorus with the “Crashing down, crashing down, crashing down” section that can also be heard in the demo. I guess they simply weren’t happy with that bit.
Fans were probably not too shocked to hear the extended Petrucci solo that had been included in this song since the 00s. As always, he kicked ass. It was a great time.
Constant Motion
This was a big surprise to me. In all my scribblings about Portnoy wanting to take a hiatus, I point to Constant Motion as the song that was most telling about his mental state at the time of his split from the group. It fits well with the album title – Systematic Chaos – and a brisk skim-read of the lyrics shows his evident exhaustion of the relentless tour-record-tour-record cycle; don’t forget that Portnoy was also involved in several other musical projects at that time, touring with most of them too.
I managed to snap the guy who swings Portnoy’s mic into place when he sings.
So I was surprised as heck that Portnoy would choose to resurface this rather painful song that seemed so representative of his previous mental state. Perhaps it was a power play: by playing Constant Motion, it could be a sign that Portnoy is mindful of where he was in the past and is looking to do things differently this time.
That would be the poetic theory. There’s also a chance that Portnoy simply wanted more opportunities to sing, which was an aspect of his performances I had completely forgotten about. There were plenty of songs on the setlist that involved his singing, but none more noticeable than this, where Portnoy and LaBrie frequently exchange lines before engaging in a harmony.
Mangini, for all his impeccable qualities, did not sing for the group, and I did not realise until this night just how much of an impact Portnoy’s growly baritone had on the music. Constant Motion was played on the group’s 2015 tour with LaBrie performing both vocal parts in the back-and-forth section, and it simply did not sound authentic; tonight, with Portnoy reinstated, made the song complete again.
As I Am
Finishing the first act was another song that I’ve never been that partial to. The opening of As I Am is very epic, but afterwards it’s a pretty straightforward Dream Theater song. I know that I am in the minority of this opinion as the crowd went absolutely wild, and that was fun to see at least.
– Intermission –
Night Terror
After the twenty-minute interval came an Orchestral Overture, a short piece that consisted of themes from all sixteen of the band’s albums; this specially composed track played over a video that showed playful reimaginings of Dream Theater’s album covers.
As the video ended on the album cover of Parasomnia, it was only fitting that the band launch into their newest single Night Terror. What a corker of a track it is. There was a lot of pressure on the band to release a promising single with the reunited classic line-up, but they truly knocked it out of the park with this ten-minute belter. I like that it features a more pared-down metal sound and has an instrumental that is heavy on the 7/8 time signature.
After the song had finished, LaBrie teased that they were planning to play the full album on their next tour (presumably because it’s a concept album) and I felt uneasy about that. It puts a lot of pressure on the new album being so good that you don’t mind listening to it instead of some stone-cold classics, and somehow I’m not sure about the band’s chances to pull off a Metropolis – Pt. 3 this late in their career. Hopefully, I’ll be proven wrong, however, and the album will be great. Night Terror is certainly a positive indicator of things to come.
This Is the Life
Another Mangini-era song I had completely forgotten. Five minutes long and pretty easy on the drums, it seems that Portnoy had copped out of playing anything too challenging this time around.
Under a Glass Moon
Around the time Portnoy’s return to Dream Theater had been announced, he started doing some videos with Drumeo that started circulating heavily on Facebook and other social media. One of these included a full performance of Under a Glass Moon which he said he hadn’t played since the last time he was in the group. It did make me think how hard he must have taken that loss, not being able to listen to or play any of your own band’s songs because the memory was too painful.
Tour-goers also got to see the same performance, along with the rest of the band. I was a bit dismayed that this was the first song that didn’t fit the ‘one song per album’ formula, which tanked the chances of hearing any WDADU at this concert. It’s not really fair to ask LaBrie to sing a song like this anymore as his vocal range is simply not the same. As a result, he did some weird vocal stuff instead. Everyone tolerated it because we were all anticipating the lengthy guitar and keyboard solos that dominate the instrumental section.
Vacant
This was certainly a surprise. From Train of Thought, it’s the shortest song, practically a ditty. Gloomy and haunting, it sets up the following track on the album. But would they play it…?
Stream of Consciousness
I nearly lost my head when this came on. I was not aware that it hadn’t been played since the Train of Thought tour in 2004 (making it the only song on the setlist that hadn’t been played in 20 years) but I knew it was quite rare. I was also ecstatic that the clue to what was coming – Vacant – turned out to be correct. Portnoy (who I’m sure created the setlist) has been clever in rewarding longtime fans who can follow the clues.
The rarely-heard instrumental was played in its eleven-minute glory from its proggy outset through its grungy breakdown (my favourite) and through to its operatic conclusion. And I was blissfully happy for all of it.
Octavarium
No sooner had the band finished than Jordan fired up his keyboards for a very familiar intro. “Wait, are they about to play all of Octavarium?” I thought. It certainly seemed that way, and it would be pretty cruel for the band to only tease it and then play something else. I geared myself up for a 24-minute adventure that had not been heard in full since its inaugural tour in 2006.
Speaking of Rudess, his keyboards looked fantastic on this set, kitted with a set of LEDs that would occasionally show different animations such as an oscilloscope or a representation of the keys he was actually playing in that moment. People still wonder why he’s the only member of the group who reads sheet music as he plays, but I reckon he has a far more complicated job than anyone else on stage, and if the music sounds great, I don’t care what tools he has to use.
The band did indeed play all of Octavarium and it was utterly magnificent, even if the orchestral parts were synthesised. It’s a song that I used to love so much back in the day, but I ended up overplaying it to the point where it held no more surprises. While I knew intellectually that it was a treat for Dream Theater to bring it back for this tour, I didn’t have the emotional connection to it the same way I had with Stream of Consciousness, even though Stream had never been one of my favourites, particularly.
– Encore –
Home
Folks went wild after the band left the stage and demanded an encore. Yes, encores have become an entirely symbolic ritual at this point, but they’re still fun. A video clip from The Wizard of Oz rolled on the projector, ending with the phrase “There’s no place like home.” Another great clue for the fans.
The quarter-hour centrepiece from Scenes from a Memory seemed like a delightful goodbye from the band and the audience loved it, right down to the brief drum solo finale. However, that was not all…
The Spirit Carries On
Rudess started noodling with his keyboard before all the instruments were cut. LaBrie had a very sombre announcement to make that would change the mood of the evening entirely. He informed us that Portnoy’s sister Samantha had just passed away a few hours ago. The fervent audience fell silent as LaBrie asked everyone to raise their phone torches and dedicate this performance to Samantha Portnoy.
It was a humbling moment for me. The band had been playing, business as usual, for two and a half hours; nobody in the audience could have expected that such a tragic event had just taken place. According to Portnoy’s Instagram post that evening, he found out 30 minutes before going on stage. It’s unimaginable to have to work and put on such a performance in the early stages of grief, but Portnoy was an absolute champ the entire evening.
The news united the whole audience who were swaying and singing along to one of the band’s most popular anthems. I genuinely thought this was a one-off performance that the band were playing in her honour, but it turned out that this song had been on the tour’s setlist since it began nine days earlier. Nevertheless, it was an emotional affair as Portnoy sobbed and hugged Petrucci after the song’s conclusion.
Somehow, that still wasn’t all…
Pull Me Under
The encore had already been over twenty minutes, and I don’t think even the most greedy fan could have expected more. Nevertheless, the band generously played one of their most enduring songs from Images and Words, the song that was a minor hit on MTV for a brief period in the early 90s: Pull Me Under.
It’s not a song I needed to hear, personally: I’ve seen it performed plenty of times before and it remains the band’s most-played song live. It’s not especially complex either, and with the doom-laden lyrics, it’s a bit of a downer. I’d rather hear the upbeat Take the Time, but I’m aware that it’s tough for LaBrie to do the song justice these days. Another surprise rare track would have satisfied me but I’m sure a lot of casual fans were overjoyed just to hear the band’s “hit”. And it was a great send-off.
Epilogue
As I shuffled out of the arena, I couldn’t stop thinking about the sad announcement about Portnoy’s sister, and the crazy twist of fate that led me to share the same evening with one of my favourite drummers on one of the most important nights of his life in this random central European capital. You can watch his performances on YouTube, but only people who were there would be able to tell you what a professional he was that night.
It’s a huge shame that the joy of embarking on a tour with Dream Theater once again has been overshadowed by this tragic news, as well as the knowledge that he could not return for her burial service, but I’m sure that fans are appreciative of the sacrifices the group have made to keep the show going.
And what a show it was. Catering to longtime fans as well as newcomers to the scene, the band rocked for three hours, showcasing what made this ‘classic’ line-up so great in the first place by focusing heavily on the group’s 00s period.
I’m sure every fan has their own ideal setlist, and you can’t please everyone; however, I did think it was a mistake to only perform two short forgettable Mangini-era songs. It felt like the minimum amount of “acknowledgement” the band could get away with.
I enjoyed the surprises a lot, such as the added lyrics and extended solo in Hollow Years, and the brief circus theme in Under a Glass Moon, but I would have loved to see even more. Back in the day, the group would throw all sorts of extra nuggets into their songs, and I dream of the 19-minute extended Beyond This Life from Live at Budokan.
Quibbles aside, this was an excellent first tour back with Portnoy, and a great celebration of four decades with this group. This was the seventh time I’ve seen Dream Theater and possibly the best concert I have seen them play – the 25th anniversary performance of Images and Words in 2017 with A Change of Seasons as an encore cannot be discounted. With a great new single as a sign of good things to come, I’m feeling more confident about this reunited Dream Theater.
[Photos by Basil Francis]
SETLIST
Metropolis – Pt. I
Overture 1928
Strange Déjà Vu
The Mirror
Panic Attack
Barstool Warrior
Hollow Years
Constant Motion
As I Am
~ Intermission
Night Terror
This Is the Life
Under a Glass Moon
Vacant
Stream of Consciousness
Octavarium
~ Encore:
Home
The Spirit Carries On
Pull Me Under
MUSICIANS
James LaBrie – Vocals
John Petrucci – Guitar
Jordan Rudess – Keyboards
John Myung – Bass
Mike Portnoy – Drums, Vocals
LINKS
Dream Theater – Website | Facebook | YouTube | X | Instagram