Review Summary: Dream Theater simultaneously complete a story and begin a cycle.
Setbacks, like failure, have a way of testing one’s resilience. Dream Theater had their share during the 1990’s, which seemed to culminate in the oft-dismissed
Falling Into Infinity. It was a rough time of transitions, each taking the band further away from what made them an overnight success. This trend continued in 1999’s
Scenes from a Memory, a concept album and follow up to “Metropolis,” from
Images and Words. And though Dream Theater weren’t about to regress their sound, they were about to release what many consider the band’s most pivotal work.
Scenes from a Memory quickly establishes that this will not be a misstep like
Falling Into Infinity. One listen to “Overture 1928” and the listener is immediate grabbed, ready for the story to come, primarily told through lyrics that read like a stage play attempt. Even album closer, “Finally Free,” begins in a way that seems to mimic something you’d hear in a theater. This approach to storytelling, admittedly, produces mixed results. The focus is more on the album, less on the individual tracks. Theoretically this choice is understandable, but in practice it makes some points difficult to swallow. Dream Theater have always bounced around when it comes to how good or bad their songwriting is, and
Scenes from a Memory is hardly divergent.
Outside of lyrical merit,
Scenes from a Memory has few faults. The disconcerting direction from
Falling Into Infinity is completely abandoned, with the band expressing a newfound freedom to emphasize their progressive edge. Then-newcomer Jordan Rudess (replacing Derek Sherinian on keyboard) certainly had a role to play in this, coming from Liquid Tension Experiment. He doesn’t simply gravitate towards overzealous stretches of sounds, he seems to bathe in them. If Dethklok added a keyboard player to their line-up, chances are they’d pick Rudess. While these exaggerated moments are distracting, they mostly exist in longer tracks with the rest of the band following suit.
Most of the album’s heavier moments occur in the first half; “Beyond This Life” is immediately memorable, no small thanks to the band going all-out and almost never letting up, save an oddly distorted recurring line (“our deeds have travelled far...”). Although, the emotional ballad “Through Her Eyes” is followed by perhaps the best individual track, “Home,” which begins and closes with a brilliant tribal vibe that Myrath must have taken after. From there on, the album begins to wind down as instrumental number “The Dance of Eternity” transitions to fan-favorite, “The Spirit Carries On” and finally, “Finally Free.” In addition to the initial theatrical vibe, the album closer feels less like a song and more like a way to conclude the story with a debatable ending. Regardless, “Finally Free” does squeeze a few chilling keyboard notes in, along with a distorted ending that would begin the meta album sequence, continuing on
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and concluding with
Octavarium.
What
Scenes from a Memory accomplished for Dream Theater, especially given its predecessor, is a sense of redemption and progression. With just one release, the band quelled one storm and began another, all while completing an ambitious story that became one of the most acclaimed concept albums ever. What can be contested is the mark of perfection many bestow the album with; as said, the lyrics don’t always work and there are moments the band goes too far. That said,
Scenes from a Memory remains an encompassing stepping stone for Dream Theater, one that contains a few of the band’s best songs and some of their best performances as a whole.
