Κάποιος ποσταρε σε ένα γκρουπ στο fb , κριτική για το νέο άλμπουμ…τη ποσταρω εδώ και βλέπουμε αν ήταν μουφα…Dream Theater – Parasomnia
Mike Portnoy’s comeback with a thematic album based on dreams and nightmares.
This story begins with a musical box, a rattle, something that teleport us to lullabies which sets the atmosphere of what’s going to come with this album… Suddenly a clock starts clicking, everything becomes darker, and the madness begins…
“In The Arms of Morpheus”
An instrumental that begins with those famous 8-strings that people love. There’s a lot of tension in the ambience. Without any doubt, we’re facing a great overture that travels through all the melodies that we’re going to listen to throughout the album, also having its own identity.
Once the song ends, we start listening something familiar…
“Night Terror”
The first single from Parasomnia. What else can be said that hasn’t been said before? It’s a mix between the last couple of albums before Mike Portnoy’s departure and what they’ve learned during the last 14 years with Mike Mangini.
It has a little bit of everything, powerful riffs, a great chorus, exceptional solos, and those famous tempo changes that make DT what they are.
The themes of this song are nightmares and sleep paralysis.
“A Broken Man”
The second single from this album. An extremely heavy introduction, with some changes here and there, setting the heavy atmosphere that it touches: PTSD.
It is probably one of the most different songs they made considering what we are used to listening to from them, however we can find some moments that remind us of ‘Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence’. As if that wasn’t enough, when we reach the instrumental part of the song, Petrucci delivers a completely wacky solo from out of nowhere to then come back to the chorus. Please, pay attention to the chorus melody. It’s one of the recurrent melodies of the album.
“Dead Asleep”
If the last couple of songs were heavy, thankfully now we have a breather…
… or not. Possibly the heaviest song in the album. A dark atmosphere where someone is remembering a tragedy of which it doesn’t remember anything about because it was sleeping… or not?
During the instrumental part of the song, there are some passages that can remind us to the instrumental part of ‘Beyond This Life’.
“Midnight Messiah”
I don’t want to spoil much about the topic of this song. I like to call this song this way:
Imagine Megadeth, Metallica, Judas Priest & Bad Salad had a son, and the godfather is ‘As I Am’.
Well, that’s kind of what you can expect here. in has great vocal melodies while keeping on a familiar zone within the DT World.
Oh… and if it wasn’t clear enough… It’s heavy AF.
“Are We Dreaming”
This little piece of music serves as an interlude for ‘Bend the Clock’. It’s basically a small composition that retakes some of the principal melodies and gives them a special touch that can generate sadness, happiness, nostalgia, etc. in less than a minute and a half.
Just a little breather before…
“Bend the Clock”
This one is probably going to click with a lot of people. It’s some kind of power-ballad where we can find beautiful melodies, and it speaks about a person that wants to advance in his life and leave everything behind, but it finds itself paralyzed within its own nightmares and panic attacks.
The song ends with an epic John Petrucci solo that is going to remind people a lot to ‘A New Beginning” ending from ‘The Astonishing’.
And now, we reached the end…
“The Shadow Man Incident”
For those who suffered this (me included) it’s a known topic.
There are people that probably are not going to understand what’s going on, but I believe is cool that someone talks about it.
The song structure reminds me of a mix of the intro from “In the Presence of Enemies Part 1” and the rest to “In the Presence of Enemies Part 2”.
It begins with a musical box and suddenly out of nowhere the song starts. It’s really a journey from beginning to end. The topic is about a figure of a shadow/person that, for some reason, appears all around the world and there’s no logical explanation about this, but this figure paralyzes us and doesn’t let us continue.
I won’t spoil more about this one, I want you to live the experience. The only thing I can say is that it has some of the best James LaBrie melodies I’ve heard in a long time.
This album is a thematical album, not a concept. It treats different dream topics as sleep disorder and the mental illness that can cause.
Probably is going to take some time to take it in at the beginning, but once you learn the parts of the songs, it’s a great experience.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
