Preamble

A Dramatic Turn Of Events is a great way to describe the events that happened over at Dream Theater. Founding drummer Mike Portnoy shocked everyone after leaving the band citing being overwhelmed with all the recording and touring. Shortly after, Avenged Sevenfold announced their new drummer and all of the sudden Mike tried getting back into Dream Theater, they refused. A whole public media circus happened with Mike acting like a little girl and blaming everyone but himself. Everyone in Dream Theater went do doing their thing, James Labrie did another solo album, and the band went on searching for their new drummer, Mike Mangini.

Review

A Dramatic Turn Of Events can easily be classified as a combination of the entire Dream Theater discography. An obvious link would be to 1992s Images and Words, but there’s much more than just that. Throughout the album I felt many similarities with the Alcoholic Anonymous Suite, and even Systematic Chaos. They’re not recycling riffs or anything, it’s just that the general structure of the song is similar. No, the album doesn’t do anything revolutionary and it may feel a bit predictable to veteran fans, but that’s not always a bad thing.

If you’re worried about losing any of the technicality now that Mike Portnoy has been replaced, have no fear. Mangini does an amazing job of filling in Portnoy’s shadow.  I wouldn’t even notice that Portnoy was gone.

The songs are nicely divided between soft ballads and more metal tracks. I for one prefer the soft ballads, simply because they ended being beautiful. Pianos are used much more throughout the album. Beneath The Surface is probably my favourite Dream Theater ballad ever, the final chorus is some of the best singing James Labrie ever did.

However with that said the heavier tracks are also incredible. Build Me Up, Break Me Down quickly became one of my favourites on the album. One thing I do not miss from previous albums is Mike Portnoy’s backing vocals which always felt a bit out of place.

One really interesting track I have to mention here is Bridges In The Sky, (which is also known as Belches In Sky) which starts off with some really strange throat singing. It really is strange to hear this on a metal album and I just ended up laughing my ass off, but after a couple of times of hearing it, it stops being so funny and starts fitting the mood of the song really well.

Unfortunately there are some forgettable tracks, such as the ironically named Lost Not Forgotten and Outcry. These songs just don’t feel like they’re up the bar that the rest of the album has set.

Other Content

The limited edition box set contained the following items:

-          An instrumental mix of the album
-          DVD Documentary of the search of the new drummer
-          2LP of the album
-          A turntable slipmat
-          A lithograph of the album cover
-          A chance to win a “Ticket For Life”
-          Digital copy of the album a day before release

I will start off by mentioning the horrible service I received from The Omega Order/Roadrunner Records. After paying up the ass for this collector’s edition I got an email from Omega Order (a day before release saying that my boxset will be delayed due to production issues. Now, I still got the digital version of the album that was included in the pre-order for the box set. But that wasn’t the point. You would think that they would try to compensate for this issue by shipping via express post or something, instead they decided sending me a coupon for 20% off my next order which expired 6 days after I received the email. This is not the first time The Omega Order screwed me over, in 2009 when Black Clouds And Silver Linings came out my order was delayed due to some unforeseen circumstances as well.

I was a bit disappointed with the box set to be honest, it contained the instrumental mix of the album, but unlike the Black Clouds & Silver Linings one, it did not contain “stems” of the album. Stems are basically the instruments separated into different tracks, so you can listen to guitars only, for example.

The boxset also felt pretty cheap in terms of quality. The cardboard used feels flimsy and the lithograph doesn’t look as sharp as it should. My 2LP also came separated. The vinyls were in the envelopes but they weren’t in the sleeves. Another thing I disliked was that there was no lyric book on the actual CD. Instead the lyrics were just printed on the gatefold. One point I will make for it is that it had the cardboard cutout to keep the CD in place.

The Bottom Line

A Dramatic Turn of Events is everything you would think a Dream Theater album would be. It doesn’t change up the formula too much and you can take that as a good thing or a bad thing. The addition of a new drummer isn’t too drastic and most people won’t even notice any change in style. It has some similarities to older albums, but the album still feels fresh. The album does a great job of varying between heavy tracks and soft ballads to please most fans. The boxset is largely disappointing unless you win the “ticket for life” and it isn’t worth the $100 dollars it costs.  Overall a great album and I’ll be waiting to see where Dream Theater goes from here.