R.I.P. Dream Theater 1985-2010

Yeah, but I don't hold it against you.

Anyway, I have no problem with long songs (While Type O Negative never did a song that lasted 20 minutes, they had plenty of awesome tunes that were not radio friendly). It's just when the length is as much detriment as it is benefit. I understand a 4 minute song leaves little but a verse chorus verse chorus or similar structure, but there's a point at which you go from genius to excess, and iteration to redundancy.

Since I've been looking at books of late for the sake of comparison to my own novel's length, I'll use examples from there briefly:

Twilight: Twilight is 540 pages, extremely long for a first work, and kind of long for most genres. This is a length frequently reserved for fantasy epics. Granted, Meyers is complete **** and DT is not, but the idea that her book needed to be over 500 pages longer, nearly 200 longer than most similarly genred titles is just inane.

But really, DT are more like Chris Paolini. The guy spends thousands of pages writing Star Wars, A book whose novelisation is really short. Think about that. The guy basically took Tolkienesque technicality and used it to fluff what might as well be 200 pages into a fantasy "epic." Reading Eragon was both fun and painful, because even I was screaming "editor," and I tend to go on. All the verbosity is almost completely unnecessary.

I do like DT, but they're not just long, they're excessively so. The themes they come up with are often not interesting enough to merit the repetition and modulation you see them go through. Lennon wrote interesting things in four minutes. Marley did, too. May and Mercury as well. Baroque composers, which is where a lot of "prog" draws inspiration, did more in less time. Of course, they weren't writing for theory geeks, they were the theory geeks and they were writing the books. Which could be the big difference.Trying to cram every technique from your college degree into every song may appeal to college music students, but it doesn't really make it good.

I love the internet. I was just mourning the loss of Mike Portnoy and we have a whole argument going.

It's great isn't it?...

What, is he dead?

I figured DT fans would like this news:

Ex-DREAM THEATER Drummer MIKE PORTNOY: 'I Am Indeed VERY Sad Over All Of This'

The one silver lining in this is DT might shy away from the more detuned/dark/metal edge they have been putting out in force since Train of Thought. Not to say I have not enjoyed it, but ToT was by far their best balls to the wall "heavy" album. Black Clouds was a good/Great album because they appeared to attempt a balance between the heavier influences with a return to their more progressive sounds from their earlier works. The ending to count of Tuscany and the wrapping up of the twelve step suite gave me hope for a softer (by comparison) follow up album in vein of Falling into Infinity/Scenes.

It will be interesting to see how dream theater does at moving on, considering Portnoy handled most of the band's workload both on the album and on tour because he was such a control freak/perfectionist. Maybe the bassist will finally start getting writing credits again.

DT is good,
personally i've never been a big fan of them,
I'd agree that their drummer is one of the best,
but i'd gladly argue against him having the top spot,
of course that all depends on how musically diverse you are,
if you're only familiar with prog, black, death, w.e metal you choose, etc.
[mostly because comparing extreme metal drummers vs other styles, is in some ways apples to oranges.]

On the whole technical note,
yes they've wrote some very impressive songs on a technical level
but in most cases they've failed to hold my attention
as it's been said they tend to be a bit excessive when it comes to length,
not always a bad thing, but it can be annoying.

To ya'll that are fans, hopefully he goes back,
I know how it is to have a band I like lose members
or disband,
and it's balls.

Personally metal while I still love it,
has been a bit stale for me,
so off to dubstep I go.

I find Jazz/Fusion drummers to be the best they have incredible timing and technique. I mean sure metal drummer have the speed but most of the time it's all the same licks.

This guy is freaking awesome!

I know its not likely to happen, but maybe now that Portnoy is done with DT, this other act of his might get a little more time to shine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcEFhJdt ... re=related

They just put out an album with Mike, Jordan, and Tony in 2008. John had family issues at the time, so I think it might be possible to have a full reunion now.

"Pull Me Under" still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it.

Then you should love this-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxchg8E3FBE

oh yes, that's hilarious!