Review: Dream Theater — A View From the Top of the World
So, it has finally landed, the latest Dream Theater album. “A View From the Top of the World”, released on October 22nd, is the fifteenth studio album from prog metal giants Dream Theater, marking two years since their last studio release — Distance over Time — and the fifth album featuring drummer Mike Mangini. It’s has all the markings of a classic prog album, 7 songs clocking in at a total of 1 hour 10 minutes, the title track being the longest at 20:23, and the rest between 6:30 and 10 minutes in length. Just as it should be.
So, what to make of this album? I must admit, as big a fan as I am, the post-Portnoy era DT has not impressed me much, though they have been getting better, album by album. Their previous effort, Distance over time, was actually OK — a middling DT album in all honesty but definitely getting there — so I was equally curious and uneasy about the new album. Petrucci’s recent reunion with Mike Portnoy on Terminal Velocity gave me hope, there was a lot of old DT on that album, and the first single “The Alien” sounded very promising. At the same time Portnoy’s presence is sorely missed in DT, not necessarily the drumming — Mangini is a fine drummer in his own right — but his contribution to the song writing. Much of the material DT has produced since his departure has been lackluster and unimaginative at best, and the less said…