On living Awake

Firstly, a public service announcement: seeing as my blog is to be a mishmash of writings on different things, I've begun categorizing my posts by topic to make for easier navigation. To see all the posts on a certain topic (i.e. math), click on it in the sidebar. On to the meat of my post:

I could probably devote an entire blog to writing about music, but for the sake of balance and not boring people with ramblings about music they've never heard of, I'm trying to restrain myself to one or so post a week. Anyway, I happen to be listening to one of the finest albums by one of my favorite bands, Dream Theater, so I figured it was a good a place to start as any. For those who don't feel like reading their (admittedly fairly exhaustive) Wikipedia page, Dream Theater is a progressive metal band from New York. They have written a 42-minute metal suite on mental illness and a 57-minute one on the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Their instrumentalists are all some of the best in the world on their respective instruments and greatly enjoy showing off during their trademark incredibly long instrumental breaks.

Awake (1994) is Dream Theater's third album. They were under a lot of pressure to make a good one after Pull Me Under from their previous album somehow become a hit on MTV and established them as standard-bearers of progressive metal, and luckily Awake does not disappoint. In my opinion it's Dream Theater's most interesting album; dark (in a pensive and brooding way, not as angry as Train of Thought), intricately constructed, and heavier than anything they'd previously made. The lyrics are poetic and much more layered and cryptic than on their newer albums, able to keep me thinking even after dozens of listens.

6:00, Caught in a Web, and Innocence Faded are all classic Dream Theater songs, setting the dense, heavy, yet thoughtful tone of the album. Through all its whimsicality, 6:00 has an angry tone to it, having been written by keyboardist Kevin Moore about his frustration with the band (this being his last album with them). Innocence Faded is a beautifully melodic ballad, and Caught in a Web falls somewhere between. After this the next three songs form the mini-suite "A Mind Beside Itself", starting with the instrumental Erotomania. Voices is the standout song of the album, a near-10-minute prog epic that goes from quiet and melancholy to aggressive metal and back (repeatedly), with the short and acoustic The Silent Man to unwind with afterward.

The Mirror and Lie are the two heaviest songs of the album, which makes the keyboard break at the end of The Mirror all the more beautiful. Lifting Shadows Off a Dream is another quieter, melodic ballad focusing on LeBrie's voice. The longest and most impressive track on the album, Scarred, is another epic showcasing Dream Theater's love of packing as much into their songs as will possibly fit. Finally, after all this is is Space-Dye Vest, a heart-wrenching keyboard-driven song packed with vocal samples and as close to emo as Dream Theater has ever gotten. (Don't worry, it's awesome) The rest of the band slowly comes in to join Moore and LeBrie as the song builds to a satisfying conclusion for a very satisfying album.

All told, Awake is a masterpiece. Perhaps more intellectually dense than any of Dream Theater's other albums, it just keeps getting better with repeated listens as you unpack more and more of the songs' complexity. Dream Theater--particularly pre-Train of Thought Dream Theater--is thinking man's metal, and nothing showcases this better than Awake. (And maybe its predecessor Images and Words) Join me next week as I talk about whatever music I feel like!