Dream Theater @ Hard Rock Live

Biloxi, MS

Words: L.B. Wilson III

Photographs: Canonblue Lalley

On October 19th, progressive metal legends Dream Theater gave Biloxi two shows. The first was a play-through of their newest album, Distance Over Time. The album, and the associated show, offers fans enough heavy metal punch to convince new listeners that veteran fans have been right about them all along. When Distance Over Time ended, the lights came up for a brief intermission before the second act began; the 20th Anniversary of Metropolis Part 2: Scenes from a Memory, the band's best-known concept album from 1999.
While Distance Over Time has some great songs, and the band's performance of “Pale Blue Dot” was phenomenal, it was clear what the people who filled the Hard Rock's Boogie Nights auditorium came to see. Metropolis Part 2 is one of the greatest concept albums ever made, and throughout the first act, the crowd was obviously waiting politely and patiently.
When the Scenes set began, the concert backdrop shifted from the cosmic panoramas of Distance Over Time to a graphic novelization of the album's plot, including an anime-ingenue depiction of Victoria, the victim of the story's central murder-mystery. The animated backdrop was a great touch, and offered a modern look to the twenty-year old prog-rock masterpiece.
Jordan Rudess, the band's keyboardist, began his tenure in Dream Theater with Scenes from a Memory, and Rudess gave a wonderfully entertaining performance, swapping time between his massive rotating-electric-keyboard-rig and a comically huge and entirely functional keytar. Rudess and guitarist John Petrucci's back and forth during “Home” and “Dance of Eternity” were impressive and fun.
Bassist John Myung, as the people around me at the show routinely pointed out, IS the frontman of Dream Theater. The band has made metal music for people who make music for decades, and while James Labrie is a phenomenal voice and nothing here is meant to detract from his performance, what John Myung and John Petrucci do on stage during the whole concert is just a clinic on how to play a guitar. In both the Distance and the Scene sets, Myung and Petrucci dominated the stage, playing with and against one another with energy and excitement. They seemed to be there for themselves, enjoying their work, and they enthralled this Biloxi crowd.
Dream Theater die-hards are familiar with the band's relationship with drummer-demigod Mike Portnoy, but for the uninitiated, suffice it to say that Portnoy is no longer with the band and was replaced years ago. His shoes are most recently filled by Mike Mangini, who did a terrific job and even added a few unique fills during “Fatal Tragedy.” Perhaps the most laudatory thing anyone can say about any drummer in Mangini's position is that Mike Portnoy wasn't there and it is safe to say no one really noticed.
If the show had one downside, it was James Labrie's sound tech. During the show, much of the audio mixing was off; at one point during the Scenes set, his high falsetto was belted into a completely dead microphone. Those hiccups were promptly and professionally handled, and the crowd seemed entirely forgiving. Much of that forgiveness surely came from the intimate nature of the venue; the Boogie Nights stage at the Hard Rock Casino is a small concert hall with a single balcony, so when the microphones went down, most of us could still hear James, and he was killing it.
Dream Theater is a band whose heyday may likely have past; while Distance Over Time was a fine performance of a fine album, most of the concert-goers had little to say about the show's first act. That said, if you have the opportunity, ever, to see the band play through Metropolis Part 2, you should jump at the chance. For a band of hyper-educated musical scholars playing hyper-technical riffs and runs in labyrinthine time signatures, these guys also put on a hell of a live show.