Mijn laatste 'sounds' dateert al van 12 augustus, damn! Niet dat er ondertussen helemaal niets is verschenen dat me kon bekoren. Omwille van een rits concerten loop ik echter serieus achter. Tijd voor een inhaalbeweging en dus volgen deze week enkele 'nieuwe' nummers die ondertussen al even uit zijn. Het knappe The Alien van oudjes Dream Theater bv. Niets nieuw onder de zon, wel een erg knap in elkaar gestoken en opgebouwd stuk. Moet hierover meer gezeverd worden? Het is op en top Dream Theater hé mensen, lees prog metal van de bovenste plank, dat zou moeten volstaan ... voor de fans toch. A View From The Top Of The World verschijnt op 22 oktober via InsideOutMusic. lees
“It’s the first one we wrote together. It gives people a window into what it was like when we initially met up after all of those months off. It has the adventure, the untraditional structure, the heaviness, and the hooks. It really set the tone for the album,” explains John Petrucci. “James wrote the lyrics about the idea of terraforming and looking beyond our Earth for alternative settlements. Since we’re going beyond our planet, ‘The Alien’ turns out to be us. I thought it was a cool and creative lyric by James.”
Dream Theater – comprised of James LaBrie, John Petrucci, Jordan Rudess, John Myung and Mike Mangini - was in the middle of a sold-out world tour in support of their last release Distance Over Time and the 20th anniversary of Scenes From A Memory when a Global Pandemic brought the world to a stop. The musicians found themselves at home with LaBrie in Canada and the rest of the group in the States. As fate would have it, they’d just finished construction on DTHQ (Dream Theater Headquarters) —a combination live recording studio, rehearsal space, control room, equipment storage, and creative hive. With LaBrie in Canada, he initially wrote with the band via ZOOM on a monitor in DTHQ. In March 2021, he flew down to New York, quarantined, and recorded his vocals face-to-face with Petrucci. The album ultimately threaded together lean and uncompromising hooks with tried-and-true technical proficiency.
