“Never Enough” by Dream Theater
From the 2005 album Octavarium

Another iTunes shuffle result. I think iTunes is trying to tell me something. As in, “Get out of the ’70s you freakin’ douchebag!”

Well, maybe not.

Anyway, if Porcupine Tree is one of the pillars of contemporary progressive rock, another is surely Dream Theater. They’re often thought of as metal — especially by people who don’t know progressive rock exists. And, to some extent, metal has carried the flame for the type of intricate, extended compositions that rock otherwise abandoned after prog’s late ’70s decline. So it’s not really an insult for DT to be thought of as metal, and not progressive or at least “prog metal,” especially since their music is really heavy and driven primarily by the chunky guitar riffing and intricate, hyperactive drumming that are hallmarks of the metal style.

For the most part I really like Dream Theater. I have several of their albums. Yet there’s at least one track on every album they release that is so insufferably cheesy that I find it unlistenable, and a lot of times their tracks come off more like an etude composed by a cross-century hybrid of Bach and Mozart than as actual “songs.” Maybe if it were more Bach and less Mozart I’d like it more. (And yes, I am aware of the Spinal Tap reference dancing around on the periphery of this paragraph.)

I guess the thing I’m most confused about with Dream Theater is why they bother with the vocals at all. Clearly most of their fans are musicians themselves, and are into DT mainly to stare slack-jawed at their awe-inspiring technical prowess; to us (yes, I count myself among them), the vocals are secondary in any music anyway, and with DT in particular there’s so much going on with the instrumental parts that James LaBrie’s vocals, with all of the nuance of a sine wave, would scarcely be missed.

It’s got to feel kind of weird to be James LaBrie. He seems like a nice guy, and he’s definitely a skilled, if unemotive, singer (which fits quite well with DT, actually), but he doesn’t play any instruments — at least not to the level of proficiency that he’s comfortable doing so on stage surrounded by the rest of this band. So he seems weirdly out of place even when he’s singing, and when the other guys go off on their extended riffing excursions, he’s left with little to do. On top of that, he’s got talentless hacks like me constantly ripping on him on their irrelevant blogs.