Dream Theater - Train of Thought
On November 11, 2003, "Train of Thought", the seventh studio album by the band "Dream Theater", was released.
In 2003, progressive metal giants "Dream Theater" found themselves at an intriguing artistic crossroads. After the conceptual success of 1999's "Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory" and the experimental double album "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" from 2002, during which the band would perform classic masterpieces in their entirety as tour encores, most notably Metallica's "Master of Puppets" and Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast," the band felt a burning desire to return to the heavy, rough, and direct roots of metal. The enthusiastic response from the audience in the halls to the fast riffs and raw power convinced guitarist John Petrucci and drummer Mike Portnoy that it was time to create a focused, heavy, and uncompromising album that would forgo radio-friendly ballads in favor of a dark, technical show of power.
In April 2003, Petrucci, Portnoy, keyboardist Jordan Rudess, and bassist John Myung gathered at Cove City Sound Studios in Glen Cove, Long Island, giving themselves just three weeks to write the album from scratch. Unlike in the past, when the band members arrived with ready-made sketches from home, all seven tracks on the album were written through intense, spontaneous, collaborative play in the rehearsal room. To achieve an ever-darker, heavier sound, the guitars and bass were tuned to especially low C and D-sharp tunings, while Portnoy and Petrucci, who produced the album themselves, placed the drums and guitars at the forefront of the sonic stage. Later that summer, the band moved to Pie Studios and Beat Street Studios in New York City to complete the recordings and record the powerful vocals of vocalist James LaBrie, before being mixed by super-producer Kevin Shirley at the legendary The Hit Factory.
The album opens right where its predecessor left off, with the soaring synthesizer chord that closed "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" and connects directly into the somber opening of "As I Am". The song explodes into a crushing, rhythmic guitar riff and features one of the band's most anthemic choruses of the 2000s, before Petrucci launches into a dizzying guitar solo that has become one of his signature solos. Petrucci wrote the lyrics as a direct and pointed response to pressure from critics and fans who tried to dictate how the band should sound, and was particularly shaken by an incident during a joint tour with Queensrÿche in the summer of 2003, in which guitarist Mike Stone tried to give him playing advice backstage. At the end of the song, engineer Doug Oberkircher embedded a humorous hidden recording of Portnoy and Petrucci from the recording sessions for the album "Awake".
The second track, "This Dying Soul", at eleven and a half minutes, is the second chapter in Portnoy's Twelve Step Suite, which deals with his personal struggle with alcoholism, and directly follows on from "The Glass Prison" from the previous album. The song is divided into two chapters, the fourth step of moral inventory and the fifth step of admitting wrongs, and incorporates direct musical and verbal quotes from the previous chapter in the series. Alongside aggressive double bass drumming and a fast-paced vocal section in which LaBrie and Portnoy exchange angry lines, the piece develops into a breathtaking instrumental duel in which Petrucci's guitar and Rudess' keyboards play together in unison at superhuman speed.
Immediately following comes "Endless Sacrifice", an eleven-minute piece that opens with a quiet, melancholic, and moving acoustic prelude, in which LaBrie's warm voice caresses the listener against a backdrop of gentle guitar strumming. The lyrics, written by Petrucci under the inspiration of his wife Rena Sands, describe the difficulty and longing of married life in the shadow of endless tours far from home. However, in the chorus, the dynamics are completely reversed with heavy, cutting riffs, and in the middle of the piece, the quintet breaks out into a masterful progressive instrumental journey that includes sharp meter changes, a theatrical and entertaining keyboard solo by Rudess, and a dramatic return to the opening motif.
The fourth track, "Honor Thy Father", is undoubtedly the angriest, darkest, and most charged song on the album. For ten minutes, Portnoy unpacks his turbulent and complex relationship with his stepfather, combining a nu metal atmosphere and heavy thrash that begins with a dizzying polyrhythmic drum solo. In the middle of the song, over a tense and gloomy rhythmic construction, the band combined a collage of dramatic sound samples from the drama film "Magnolia" and the crime series "Oz," dealing with regret, family betrayal, and the inability to forgive, before arriving at the chilling line in which the speaker declares that he would not cross the road for his stepfather even if he were on fire.
To give the listener a moment of respite amidst the metal storm, the album's fifth and shortest track, "Vacant", appears. The quiet and somber three-minute piece was born from a bass and piano improvisation by Myung and Rudess, joined by guest cellist Eugene Friesen, who gives the song a chamber-like, heartbreaking touch. LaBrie wrote the personal lyrics following a devastating family crisis in which his young daughter Chloe suffered a sudden seizure and fell into a coma for several hours, from which her parents did not know if she would regain consciousness. The instrumental masterpiece "Stream of Consciousness" grows directly from the song's closing chord, a virtuoso eleven-minute piece that proves how "Dream Theater" is capable of telling an entire dramatic story without a single word, with a mesmerizing central motif that gradually builds around Myung's melodic bass line, Rudess' Hammond and synthesizer passages, and Petrucci's moving guitar solo.
The album concludes with the monumental epic "In the Name of God", a fourteen-minute piece that courageously examines the phenomenon of religious extremism, cult leaders, and terrorism committed in the name of faith, from the David Koresh affair in Texas to terrorist attacks in the modern world. The piece combines heavy, complex riffs with mysterious oriental motifs and culminates in an unforgettable instrumental section and a cathartic closing anthem in which a massive choir joins LaBrie's singing, while Rudess' piano keys close the album with their lone and final note. Within the mix of the closing minutes, Portnoy has hidden two secret messages for sharp-eared listeners, one in the form of Morse code spelling out in initials his famous phrase "Eat my ass and balls," and the other in the form of a rapid whisper quoting the American war song "Battle Hymn of the Republic."
The album's mesmerizing black and white cover was created by renowned American surrealist photographer Jerry Uelsmann, a pioneer of analog darkroom photomontage, who created a dreamy, dark world that combines a gazing human eye, clasped hands, and bare tree branches without the use of a computer. Upon its release in November 2003 on Elektra Records, "Train of Thought" caused a positive stir in the metal world, attracting a new generation of young metal fans to the band and immortalized in the historic tour that spawned the legendary "Live at Budokan" live album and DVD in Tokyo. The album stands the test of time as the pinnacle of progressive heavy metal of the 2000s and one of the most daring, tight, and influential albums in "Dream Theater"'s illustrious catalog.
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