Dream Theater, ‘Parasomnia’: Album Review

The last time Dream Theater’s classic lineup made an album, that 2009 record gave the progressive metal quintet its first Top 10 and still highest-charting LP. Since Black Clouds & Silver Linings, singer James LaBrie, guitarist John Petrucci, bassist John Myung and keyboardist Jordan Rudess have released a steady stream of five albums without their cofounding drummer Mike Portnoy.

But after more than a dozen years away, playing with various groups from the Winery Dogs to Twisted Sister, Portnoy returns for Dream Theater’s 16th album, Parasomnia, 71 epic minutes that doesn’t skimp on the band’s progressive leanings.

Going back to 1992’s masterwork Images and Words, the group’s second album and first with LaBrie, Dream Theater has advanced their analytical approach to music – Petrucci, Myung and Portnoy attended the Berklee College of Music – by leavening elaborately performed 10-minute songs with lyrical inspiration that draws from Shakespeare to the Twelve Steps to recovery. Parasomnia‘s eight tracks revolve around sleep disturbances; the music, suitably, exists in a space somewhere between sweet dreams and a nightmare.

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They waste little time setting a backdrop. Within the opening minutes of the album-launching instrumental “In the Arms of Morpheus,” melodic guitars stab and big drums roll in like they just came from an audition for a mid-’70s Genesis song. They’re soon set to metal speed: The nearly 10-minute “Night Terror” and eight-and-a-half-minute “A Broken Man” reflect their titles in both subject and execution.

If Parasomnia songs such as “Midnight Messiah” lyrically often lean toward superficial and obvious (“Eyes open wide, but I can’t see“), the music rarely takes simple routes. Head-spinning solos and rhythmically complex musical passages were essential to defining Dream Theater’s reputation; they’re no less exciting here, the 16-year break from each other rarely reveals any cobwebs. This shakes off any doubts about their return.