Dream Theater – Bucks the Trend

Seems kind of ironic that at a time when so many alternative bands are scoring big hits playing music rooted in a minimalist philosophy a band like Dream Theater would be poised to join them in the ranks of stardom.

Dream Theater’s progressive metal is the very antithesis of much of what is so popular these days – the pop flavored punk of Green Day and Offspring, the mopey thunder of Alice In Chains and Soundgarden, or the understated dynamics of Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins. Where simplicity and directness are the order of the day, Dream Theater offers a throwback to the ‘70s when bands like Genesis, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, and Yes were scripting 20-minute epics and dazzling all with their awesome displays of instrumental prowess.

Some consider the mega-successful Queensryche “progressive,” but its richly-orchestrated mood pieces are kid stuff when compared to the dizzying likes of Dream Theater’s wildly complex, rollercoaster opuses. Still, Dream Theater scored a modest hit with its last album, Images & Words, and has gained a rabid fan base through ceaseless touring that grows exponentially with its much-anticipated third album, Awake.

“Definitely the timing for the last record and this record is great because America is going through this trend of the whole Seattle scene, and everything is starting to sound alike,” opines Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy from his home in the meadowlands of Hackensack, N.J. “Anything that doesn’t sound like that – as untrendy as it may seem, it’s actually a breathe of fresh air for people out there.”

“All the trends, they come and go,” he continues. “It’s apparent that it’s already happening with the Seattle scene, with Nirvana falling apart and Alice in Chains look like they might be breaking up and Pearl Jam just lost their drummer. It looks like that whole period is now sort of passing. Hopefully we’ll never be part of a trend; that’s what will hopefully help us last. I think if anything it will just bring back some musicianship and a little bit of thought.”

Thought and musicianship; ingredients that are Dream Theater’s great strengths. While the band’s music is firmly rooted in spectacular instrumentation and epic scale, it’s also evenly balanced with inviting melody, moments of somber simplicity and good old straight-ahead crunch. The songs are also tightly scripted to incorporate all of these ingredients – especially on Awake – to bedazzle and entertain at the same time.

Musical masterbation it certainly is not, though with seven tracks clocking in at over 6:30 and the inclusion of a 20-minute long trilogy “A Mind Beside Itself” made up of “Erotomania,” “Voices” and “The Silent Man,” it might seem tempting to dismiss Awake as such. But with the record’s incredibly smooth flow and variety of moods, the pomposity and indulgence factor is all but negated.

“We all have our formal training grounds, we all know our theory and all that stuff, but we’re not like robots, like machines that just write stuff on paper,” Portnoy explains. “It’s important to us to be able to write from the heart and let emotion dictate where the song is going to go. So we try and balance the two. We don’t want to be robots – we want to have a lot of heart. We want a balance of music from the heart and music from the mind.”

“The fact that we collaborate and write everything together means that you’ve got all these different aspects coming in and different influences and inspirations, so in order to satisfy everybody’s input, sometimes it takes a while to get the expressions out,” he laughs. “But I think why we have so many different styles is because we work together. It’s not just one-dimensional – one writer’s sound or style. We don’t like to pigeonhole ourselves and say ‘well, we can only do this.’“

“We definitely strive to have diversity and variety in the music only because that’s what we listen to. I’m sitting in my house right now where my CD collection varies from The Beatles and Pink Floyd to the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy to Pantera and Sepultura to U2. Obviously there are open minded people out there that listen to all these different kinds of music and they want to hear it as well.”

It has taken some time for these people to become aware of Dream Theater, and it’s largely through its own efforts that the band has gotten itself to where it is right now. The band’s first album, When Dream And Day Unite, released on the MCA subsidiary Mechanic, never went anywhere for lack of promotion and tour support and is now out of print. This left the band to sit around cooling its heels for a couple years before signing with EastWest for Images & Words.

With better backing, Dream Theater hit the road hard, headlining its own small club shows across America. It quickly paid dividends as the shows got word of mouth going about the band, and that soon translated to better sales for Images & Words. Months after the album’s release, MTV and radio inexplicably picked up on “Pull Me Under,” easily the band’s heaviest track, and gave Dream Theater its first mainstream exposure.

By the time it was all over, Images & Words had sold some 450,000 copies in the U.S. and the band had played nearly 200 shows in 17 countries over its 14-month tour. A mighty nice foundation had been built for Awake.

“Everything that we did from the last record was a dream come true,” says Portnoy. “It was really great, way beyond our expectations, so we couldn’t be any more satisfied with that. You need to tour extensively to promote a record and let people know you’re out there. But the MTV exposure didn’t hurt and I think radio played a big factor in helping the band. It’s all shocking to us because we always figured we were going to have to do it on our own. We didn’t count on any other forms of media except for us and our music. When it come around it was just like an added bonus.”

Despite the MTV and radio exposure of last time, Portnoy knows Dream Theater can’t bank on it this time. The band, though successful by most standards, has nowhere near the draw of, say, Aerosmith or Metallica, which can generate airplay for anything they release. Instead, the band is putting more faith in the loyalty of its audience and its own hard work to support Awake. The band was set to begin its first round of headline dates in the U.S. Oct. 20 with I Mother Earth in tow.

“We’re just going to go out there on tour and we know that there are 450,000 kids in America that bought the last record, so that’s a good start,” the drummer notes. “The audience that we have is so fanatical, it’s like the most gratifying audience that a band could want. I know that they’re all gonna love the record. If MTV and radio kicks in, just like last time, it’s going to be a bonus.”

In the interim between the Images & Words tour and the release of Awake, a number of Dream Theater fans have been keeping tabs on the band via cyberspace. The band, it seems, is quite popular on the various on-line services with its own bulletin board on the Internet and a lot of attention on progressive music bulletin boards on the others.

It was with this in mind that EastWest christened its new bulletin board on the Internet’s WorldWideWeb by offering 30-second downloadable sound bites from Awake’s first single, “Lie,” two months before the record came out. It issued more sound bites from the record regularly until its Oct. 4 release.

“That was their idea, they seem to be up on all that kind of stuff whereas we aren’t up because we don’t have the time at home to be fiddling with the computer,” observes Portnoy. “It’s definitely a great idea because it’s obvious with all of the bulletin boards that are out there, the fans just trading bootlegs and discussing rumors. It’s a real good medium for reaching our fans.”

As computer illiterate as he professes to be, Portnoy has still been able to take advantage of the information superhighway to settle several Dream Theater matters.

“Actually my grandmother has Prodigy and she was telling me about all of these bootleg tradings that were going on and somebody had a tape of a show I didn’t have so I had her go in under a different name and trade a tape for me,” he laughs.

And after keyboardist Kevin Moore left, the scuttlebutt on-line was that he was being replaced by ex-Yngwie Malmsteen/Dio keyboardist Jens Johannsen. The drummer found out about this and issued a statement on Prodigy with a friend’s computer to set the record straight.

“We actually auditioned him but we passed on him,” he says. “Basically, we’re going with Jordan Rudess. We found him because he actually won all the Keyboard magazine polls last year – he beat Kev out in all those. He was filling in with the Dixie Dregs, but he’s going to do Foundations Forum with us and if that works out he’ll do the tour with us. And he may or may not be the man – we’ll see – but we’ll have time to feel that situation out.”