DREAM THEATER — Images and Words (review)

DREAM THEATER — Images and Words album cover Album · 1992 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
5/5 ·
adg211288
Images and Words is one of those albums that gets a band their reputation and one that many fans think that they’ll never surpass. While I tend to agree with the fact that Images and Words contains some of Dream Theater’s best songs, including their only hit, Pull Me Under, I really don’t think that Images and Words is all it’s cracked up to be. At the time it was and still is a huge improvement of their debut, When Dream and Day Unite, and I won’t argue the fact that it is a classic of the progressive metal genre, but Dream Theater would go on to do better. This album is faulted.

The first fault is that of the song writing on a couple of the songs. Pull Me Under, Metropolis and Under a Glass Moon may be some of the best songs of the band but I can’t look over the fact that Take the Time and Surrounded are lowering my enjoyment of Images and Words. There’s nothing particularly wrong with them aside from the fact that Take the Time could use some trimming down from its eight minute length and the fact that the shout of ‘c’mon’ about a minute in is just annoying. Progressive metal is meant to be more serious than that. Surrounded is mostly good, but it also has its annoying parts.

The second fault is that the music to Wait for Sleep (track 7) is repeated near the end of Learning to Live (track 8). This is something that always annoys me in an album. Although it is a good bit of music and the way its played is different, the tune is essentially the same. It annoys me because it always makes me think that the band were being lazy when they wrote the song and just decided to recycle something to finish off the record. It wouldn’t be so bad if this were a concept album, in fact such a move would work in a concept album, but Images and Words isn’t a concept album. At the very least, since they’re a prog band they should have just made it one song with multiple movements.

Vocal wise James LaBrie is a huge improvement on Charlie Dominici and throughout Images and Words he provides a great performance and my only criticism for him is that his voice doesn’t fit everything on here perfectly. He’s very much a love/hate singer as well, which unfortunately makes Dream Theater not a band for every metalhead to enjoy.

Music wise, aside from said faults in the actual song writing is also a great performance. John Petrucci, John Myung, Mike Portnoy and Kevin Moore may just be the best musicians of the progressive metal genre and their skill is coupled with a passion for playing that makes Dream Theater the band they are, but at this stage in their career they still, in my opinion, had work to do to make the perfect album, but without a doubt, Images and Words is their first classic album, just a faulted one.

(Review originally written for Heavy Metal Haven)
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