You go on a date. On paper, they look great and have all the qualities you’d expect of a potential match. You meet the person and they’re fun, friendly and feel very familiar. Too familiar. They remind you of an ex, not that you hate your ex, mind; you simply grew apart a long time ago. You give the person a few more chances, but while aspects of their personality become more likeable and familiar to you, it becomes desperately clear that no match will be made: you have ‘the ick’.
Okay, comparing dating to listening to albums is definitely not a perfect analogy, but there’s really no more concise way to describe my experience with Parasomnia than by saying I have ‘the ick’. Dream Theater are doing nothing that could be categorised as ‘wrong’ with their 16th album after four decades together, but their signature brand of highly technical progressive metal no longer tickles my fancy the way it did when I discovered the band in 2008.
Dream Theater were my gateway to progressive music and I listened to nothing but their music solidly for twelve months before I started to explore their older progressive influences like Yes and Rush. Since then, I’ve only returned to Dream Theater when feeling nostalgic; discovering new (or indeed, old) music has been my passion since then.
I was, of course, devastated when Mike Portnoy left the group citing ‘burnout’ as his reasons for going, though not completely surprised. For the next decade, Dream Theater released five more albums but there was always a disconnect; in the early days, I ascribed this to replacement drummer Mike Mangini whose technical chops lacked some of the more thoughtful, artistic nature of Portnoy’s methodically-written parts. As a drummer who would actively listen to that side of the music, Portnoy’s songs would usually have an ‘in’ where even novice players could crack the code before moving on to the more challenging parts. In this way, Portnoy-era Dream Theater songs were always the most interesting and fun to learn and play while Mangini’s songs always seemed too challenging to even attempt.
As time wore on, I noticed how Mangini’s kind and patient personality contrasted with Portnoy’s erratic and occasionally offensive character, and realised that Mangini might be a blessing for the group after all. After the blunder that was The Astonishing, I started to appreciate more of what Mangini was doing with the group and how they were letting him in. I also started going back to A Dramatic Turn of Events, stopped seeing it as a wrong turn for the group and looked at is as more of an experiment to update Images and Words to mixed effect. Then, with A View from the Top of the World, I started to feel that the band had finally gelled and clicked, and I gave the album an extremely positive review.
But I never listened to it again. In three years, I haven’t had the faintest desire to listen to it again, even though I liked it. Why is that? I think it’s because I’ve moved on. My tastes have evolved while the band continues to come back to the very same formula time and time again.
In 2023, the band shocked fans with the news of Mike Portnoy’s return. While I wasn’t happy with the incongruous dismissal of Mangini (who, by all accounts, seemed to know his time with the band was up even before they told him), I was cautiously hopeful that the ‘classic’ line-up could produce music that could finally satisfy the Dream Theater fan within me.
The first single, Night Terror, released just a week before the band’s 40th anniversary tour was a promising sign of things to come, with Portnoy firing on all cylinders, and memorable songwriting, capped with an exciting instrumental in ⅞ time. But the two singles that followed, A Broken Man and Midnight Messiah (not to be confused with Yes’s Machine Messiah from Drama), were less promising. They seemed like bland cookie-cutter Dream Theater songs with very few surprises – but I’ll admit the bluesy part of A Broken Man’s instrumental was entertaining. With more listens, I can sorta get into these songs, but I feel as if I’m starting to force myself to like them, which just gives me more ick. It never felt this way with Scenes from a Memory, by comparison.
At long last, the album drops, and I quickly find myself immensely unsatisfied by how much of the album I’ve already heard. After an extremely promising five-minute instrumental In the Arms of Morpheus which showcases some themes later in the album, we have two of the singles back to back, totalling eighteen minutes. I diligently heard them again on my first listen but on subsequent listens I simply elect to skip to get to the new content. I think Dream Theater’s single strategy might have backfired in this case as it makes me less excited to hear the album as a whole.
Dead Asleep is the first ‘proper’ new song that one gets to hear, nearly 25 minutes into the album. The eleven-minute track is bookended by two short piano themes which makes Jordan Rudess sound like the music teacher in between scenes at a school play. It was during this song that I realised this was set to be a truly meat-and-potatoes album with very few innovations or surprises, as this song is so stereotypically Dream Theater that it even borrows themes from older songs. Fans will call these ‘Easter eggs’ but to me, they’re a tragic reminder of how little Dream Theater has pushed the envelope in the last two decades. Compare this band to Opeth’s musical evolution in the past decade, and Dream Theater look practically prehistoric. The song’s 4/4 verse switches to 12/8 for the chorus which is one of the group’s biggest tropes and I know I’m not alone in finding it somewhat annoying.
On the plus side, I did finally come around to appreciating the central theme of the album through this song. I was initially disappointed by the concept and artwork – I still don’t like the artwork but we’ll get to that later – which suggested a silly ‘spooky’ album, and hoped that the band could instead mine some of their own emotions around reuniting, losing Mangini etc. But it does appear that parasomnia is in fact a very real and scary phenomenon for those who live with it or who know people with it. Dead Asleep is based on the true story of Brian Thomas, who strangled his wife in his sleep in 2009. Reading the Guardian article about the incident, one can see where many of the themes (and indeed song titles) of the album came from. Petrucci’s rendering of the brutal incidents can come off as extremely corny, however, making it difficult to take seriously.
Another single track – Midnight Messiah – follows before one of the biggest surprises of the album. At under ninety seconds, Are We Dreaming? is now the shortest Dream Theater song outside of the NOMACs short tracks on The Astonishing. It consists of Rudess simply playing a theme on a church organ with some voice clips. Finally, something different from the band. I appreciated the relaxed atmosphere of the piece after five metal songs in a row. My biggest gripe with A View… was that the band never slowed down on that album.
Fortunately, they seemed to also realise their mistake as the following track Bend the Clock, also takes things at a slower pace to deliver a more ballad-like track to have fans swaying before the big finale. My hot take is that I’d have liked them to dumb it down even more to make something as simply and catchy as Hollow Years as the group can’t help throwing a few odd time signatures in the verses. A lot of their older records had a token pop-oriented song that had no hint of metal, and those honestly ended up being some of their most enduring songs. I wonder if it’s easier to throw together a bonkers instrumental than it is to write a decent, catchy melody; from the way Dream Theater operate, it would certainly seem that way.
After the final poignant chorus, the song pivots into a truly epic, emotional guitar solo by Petrucci, the likes of which we haven’t seen since The Ministry of Lost Souls or The Best of Times. Myung and Rudess hold some smooth chords in an interesting, atypical minor sequence while Portnoy provides a steady rhythm with some flourish without overshadowing his bandmate. I’ve seen many fans already agree that this is the best part of the album, but what happens next is highly upsetting: it fades out. Perhaps it’s not so shocking because nearly all of Petrucci’s guitar solos like this end in a fade out but this one seems truly unsatisfying, as if the band couldn’t be bothered to bring the song to a natural close. They’ll be forced to do something with it on the upcoming tour and whatever they decide to play, I’ll wish that is what was on the album instead.
At long last, it’s time for the ‘epic’ of the album, another Dream Theater trope. The Shadow Man Incident is not mind-blowing, but it is decent; it’s just a more stretched-out version of a regular Dream Theater song. Unlike a lot of the band’s longer songs, there’s no quiet, calm or ambient section in sight, making this all thriller. The band’s instrumentals can often seem like a jumble of hodge-podge ideas bolted together, but at the 12:20 mark they lock into a groove that they actually stick to and drives the next couple of minutes as Rudess gives his take on salsa and Petrucci fires off another solo. It’s nowhere near as symphonic as Octavarium but it’s a great performance from a band entering their fortieth year together.
I don’t usually take the time to talk about album art (no pun intended), but I do feel like it’s time we turn a light on artist Hugh Syme’s practices. Once famous for collaborating with Rush, he has worked with the Dream Theater since 2005’s Octavarium but I have felt that his art worse and worse over time, and reaching a new low with Parasomnia. A lot of fans have speculated that it looks like the work of AI; whether this is true or not, it says something about the quality of the art if so many people are wondering the same thing. Even worse, some of the booklet artwork seems to have been lifted directly from one of his earlier projects as pointed out by Orion multi-instrumentalist Ben Jones who hired Syme to provide the artwork for his 2024 album The Lightbringers. I find this laziness and sloppiness to be absolutely shocking from this once-legendary artist. Is this a practice he’s done before? Do lots of bands now have the same booklet artwork because he can’t be bothered to create anything new?
While my relentless CD-purchasing habits stopped almost a decade ago, I always found room on my shelf for the latest Dream Theater album, as owning the complete set of their works felt important to me as a fan. This time around, however, I have absolutely no desire to own a physical version of this album; I have let the completist in me go. How ironic it should happen just as soon as Portnoy, the drummer I have learned the most from, rejoins the group.
My hope that the band would get all of their magic back after this fateful reunification has been dashed; the Dream Theater I used to know would push the envelope and sound different on each album, while the Dream Theater here seems to strive as hard as it can just to sound like the old Dream Theater. As some might say, one should be grateful that these ageing rockers (Rudess is pushing 70!) are still putting out decent technical prog after all this time. But from another point of view, I can see the band slowly slide into their own obsolescence by refusing to innovate or push the boundaries. If you’re looking for more Dream-Theater-flavoured music, you have it in buckets on this record. If, on the other hand, you want something as satisfying and innovative as Dream Theater used to be, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
TRACK LISTING
01. In The Arms Of Morpheus (5:22)
02. Night Terror (9:55)
03. A Broken Man (8:29)
04. Dead Asleep (11:06)
05. Midnight Messiah (7:58)
06. Are We Dreaming? (1:28)
07. Bend The Clock (7:24)
08. The Shadow Man Incident (19:32)
Total Time – 71:15
MUSICIANS
James LaBrie – Lead Vocals
John Petrucci – Guitars, Backing Vocals
Jordan Rudess – Keyboards, Backing Vocals
John Myung – Bass, Backing Vocals
Mike Portnoy – Drums, Percussion, Backing Vocals
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: InsideOut Music
Country of Origin: USA
Date of Release: 7th February 2025
LINKS
Dream Theater – Website | Facebook | YouTube | X | Instagram
