Over the years I would weave in and out of my Dream Theater fandom. Sometime after Scenes From a Memory, Dream Theater just seemed to lose me a bit. I wasn’t crazy about the lyrical content and I also wasn’t so excited to see that drummer Mike Portnoy was taking the wheel and steering the band into a direction even further from where I was willing to go.
It wasn’t until 2009’s Black Clouds and Silver Linings that I started to reconnect with Dream Theater. I felt like this album was somewhat of a return to form and the covers made it a fun album. Fast forward to Dream Theater once Mike Portnoy left. 2011’s A Dramatic Turn of Events was quite the comeback album featuring new drummer Mike Mangini but as good as it was, it sounded very mechanical and almost kind of stiff. I hung in there and hoped that the band would find it’s footing and that they did with 2019’s Distance Over Time.
Kicking off with “Untethered Angel,” right away I felt a huge smile take over my face. This is Dream Theater. Once I got to the fourth song, “Barstool Warrior,” I was gleaming. This is the Dream Theater I loved so much. It was accessible, it wasn’t overly self-indulgent and it was just a great song.
The show stopper of Distance Over Time was hands down the song, “At Wit’s End.” This is where I feel like it all came together. “At Wit’s End” is where Dream Theater shows us that they have found their footing and that they aren’t a well-oiled machine because there’s nothing mechanical about this lineup. There are so many dynamics to this song but at the same time, there is a sense of looseness and swing thanks to drummer Mike Mangini.
Distance Over Time is the album that I, as a Dream Theater fan, has been waiting for for a long time. With Distance Over Time, Dream Theater sounds like a unit; a team working together for the better good of the song. Nobody seems to be stepping out to try and take over the spotlight and that is a really amazing thing to hear from Dream Theater. With Distance Over Time, it almost feels like Dream Theater has brought us all back around full circle. If they keep at it like this, let’s hope that circle actually becomes an infinity symbol. Bravo fellas. Bravo!
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