Dream Theater And Opeth With Between The Buried And Me & Three

Keytars? 15-minute drum solos? At Progressive Nation, it’s just business as usual

For Progressive Nation 2008, heavy-prog icons Dream Theater picked a diverse lineup to support them: folk-tinged death merchants Opeth, musically omnivorous metalcore manglers Between The Buried And Me, and acoustic-metal experimenters Three. They also selected the right kind of souvenirs to bring out on the road with them: improbably, the $375 brown leather Dream Theater jackets were flying out of the merch booth. In fact, Revolver was told, the band had sold eight on the previous night.

Three – thankfully not sporting the aforementioned jackets – opened the show (the first of two back-to-back NYC dates) gently enough, and also kept their songs to an economical five minutes each. Theirs was a performance easily bested by North Carolinians Between The Buried And Me, who inspired the night’s first moshpit, albeit one that dissipated promptly when the group launched into an extended keyboard solo during the 13-minute “Ants Of The Sky.” These are forgiving fans, though. Opeth detractors have long joked that they attract metal’s most patient followers. Tonight the group tested their fans’ tolerance by remaining virtually motionless onstage, presumably hoping that their minions would be sufficiently entertained by the flawlessly executed licks that their immobility no doubt facilitated. This was not their usual hesher audience, either: When frontman Mikael Akerfeldt asked, “Are you happy?” He received a resounding “Yeah!” But when he added, “Are you drunk?” he received only a tepid response, and even a few shouts of “No!”

Before Dream Theater took to the stage, they played a video spoofing the familiar THX pre-movie reel, with its slogan. “The audience is listening.” The irony was lost, however, because, well, they really were listening. Throughout their set, the crowd would be regaled with one musical feat after the other, each one more bombastic than the last. We got keytar solos, keytar-guitar duels, and of course Michael Portnoy’s workouts on his extravagant drum kit, which boasts three bass drums and countless cymbals; his solo following ‘Endless Sacrifice’ lasted nearly 15 minutes. After hammering away alone for a while. Portnoy invited the drummers from each opening band to join him, individually at first and then all together. When finished, Portnoy smugly said. “That shit is what I call ‘Percussion Nation 2008’.”

But none of this was too much for the audience. After all, fans who have stuck by a band that has had no Billboard singles action in over a decade are anything but fair-weather friends. Having closed with ‘A Change Of Seasons’ ‘The Crimson Sunset’, Portnoy ended the night by joking, “We’re gonna take a short, 22-hour intermission, then we’ll be back for another set. See you then!” And you know. this audience was probably there.

—Kory Grow