DREAM THEATER — A Change of Seasons (review)

DREAM THEATER — A Change of Seasons album cover EP · 1995 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
Phonebook Eater
6/10

"Change Of Seasons": best prog metal song ever? Definitely not the best EP, though.

1996-1997 was a sort of a transitional period for Dream Theater, when they got keyboardist Derek Sherinian, who lasted until the end of the recording of "Falling Into Infinity". As he is a good keyboardist, many think that this brief DT period has been kind of an injustice to him. But he also was in this EP, meaning that he recorded with the band the mighty twenty three minute epic title track, which many fans consider it to be the best prog metal song ever. Even though I do consider that quite the exaggeration, I really enjoyed this amazingly ambitious track.

"A Change Of Seasons" in a way I love because it's the only DT song I can define as progressive ROCK. Obviously the band wanted to create a perfect,nice and long suite that would recall Rush's "2112", Yes' "Close To the Edge", Genesis' "Supper's Ready" or Pink Floyd's "Echoes". The song was a success, and indeed reminds of these timeless masterpieces. The time changes are infinite, the different parts of the suite are very well connected to each other, and the music is very well produced. To give you a pretty precise idea of the sound, it is pretty similar to the Kevin Moore period, especially from "Awake". The drums are sharp, a lot of organ-esque keyboards, nice guitars and occasionally Myung shines as well. Labrie does also a pretty good performance overall, in the relatively few parts where he sings.

But this EP, which is hardly considered one since its almost an hour long, has other four songs apart from this huge piece of music. These four songs are covers, which is something that I almost never enjoy listening to on an album (or EP). I understand that the band is immensely grateful to the bands they give tribute to( Led Zeppelin, Elton John, Pink Floyd, Kansas,Deep Purple.....), and that they have a pretty wide range of influences. They did these covers because they want to acknowledge their heroes, but obviously they did these covers for themselves too, for their own amusement, however they did not do them for the public, that's for sure. That's why I do not enjoy them. I just rather listen to the original songs. Maybe I would listen to these covers once just for curiosity, just to see how Dream Theater interprets them. But one time is more than enough.

Overall I wouldn't listen to this all the way through, but I would gladly revisit the mighty title track. I seem to be one of the few people that doesn't absolutely love to death the "A Change Of Seasons" song, so I really would recommend this EP(the song) to whoever loves prog metal.
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Phonebook Eater wrote:
more than 2 years ago
oh sorry....I actually did know that, I probably forgot about it when writing the review.
Pekka wrote:
more than 2 years ago
I believe they had many work-in-progress versions of it, how early was the finished piece played then?
UMUR wrote:
more than 2 years ago
Yep they had played it for quite a few years. I remember seing bootlegs in the early nineties where it was included.
LittleBig wrote:
more than 2 years ago
this song was older than '95 when it was finally recorded in the studio with Sherinian on keyboards; so it was Moore that wrote the keys parts.

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