DREAM THEATER SURVIVOR 2016: Results -> A Change Of Seasons wins!

Satisfied with the results?

  • Total voters
    10
Voting Surrounded and Wait for Sleep, because as much as I really like both songs, Images and Words being my favourite DT album and all, they're still not nearly up to standard with the other songs on Images and Words imho.

I like where this game is going :D
 
Long song bias!!

Wait For Sleep is awesome. It's more than just a prelude to Learning To Live, it really stands as its own tune and is better than anything on the debut.
 
Exactly. It makes me kinda sad to see it with so many votes.

...now about it being better than anything on the debut...well, The Killing Hand still exists.
 
I think my favorite thing about Images and Words is its trajectory. With every song, it keeps getting a little better, until it builds to the ultimate climax of Learning To Live. With Pull Me Under and Another Day, you get the two most commercial songs, and then you things start to get proggy with Take the Time, which is contrasted by the tight songwriting of Surrounded. Then this all comes together with Metropolis, which somehow combines aspects of all 4 songs as well as opening up the second half of the album. Under a Glass Moon is slightly less dense, being the album's "short rocker", then there's the calm before the storm Wait For Sleep, and then it ends with the love letter to Yes that is Learning To Live. The album has such a great flow. It's not so much that every song is necessarily better than the one that came before it, but it keeps building up. It's like the band is slowly easing us into the chaos of Metropolis and then slowly bringing us back down to earth.The album is like a rollercoaster. The first four songs are the climb up the first hill, Metropolis is the drop and everything after is the corkscrews, loop-the-loops, and fast turns.

While I&W isn't my favorite album (it's probably #3 or #4), it's the only DT album without any real weak moments. I prefer Awake and Six Degrees overall, but they have a couple dips. I just think that the great moments more than make up for those few dips and those albums feel more unified, with more thematic stuff and the things of that nature that I really associate with DT. I&W is still a collection of mostly unrelated songs, but awesome songs. After that it became less about the song and more about the overall product, how the song is servicing the album.

And since there aren't any songs I dislike, I'm going to attempt to vote based on my ranking of the album (while avoiding voting for anything I&W whenever possible), which goes like this:

1: Learning to Live
2: Metropolis
3: Under a Glass Moon
4: Surrounded
5: Take the Time
6: Pull Me Under
7: Wait For Sleep
8: Another Day

The other problem is that DT's best albums aren't spread out, they all come at once. This would be a lot easier if the next album was Systematic Chaos or something, but it has to be Awake. :(
 
This is already such a farce.

So I've also been going through the live albums and DVDs, in addition to the studio albums, to get the full DT experience. Not only did DT do a live album for this tour (Live At the Marquee, which I'm listening to now), but also a video of a totally separate performance.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLO0VZcCn1VCIpyj5u24lzzXwBWegw6p0T

I really like how they made this video. Instead of just showing a full concert, they mix up live footage with music videos and behind the scenes footage. There's also a band commentary as a bonus feature, which is very cool. Best part is that the DVD version also includes Five Years in a LIVEtime, which is just as good, if not better. But more on that later.

Listening to Live At the Marquee now, which is a bit on the short side half of it is the same material, but it's worth it for the other half: Metropolis (which despite being their signature song, somehow never made it to a live DVD in its complete form until 2005), the Bombay Vindaloo jam, and The Killing Hand. Personally, I think both the WDADU and I&W songs on this album are superior to the studio versions. WDADU has really bad production and no JLB, while I&W has pretty dated production and bad sounding drums. So it's nice to have these live versions.

There's also an official bootleg from this tour which is supposedly really good (and includes an early version of ACOS), but I haven't heard that.
 
Could do with a few more voters in this round so that I can eliminate/promote stuff from the debut and move to the next album :)
 
SURVIVOR_RULES_017.jpg


Eliminated:
Only A Matter Of Time - 8 votes
A Fortune In Lies - 7 votes
Wait For Sleep - 7 votes

Promoted:
The Ytse Jam
The Killing Hand
Afterlife

Awake joins the game!
Eve is a bonus song.
 
Wait, what? Why are the WDADU songs gone? I mean, it still says Round 2.

EDIT: Nevermind!

But where's the Awake material?

EDIT 2: Oh, wait, there it is.
 
Just absorbed I&W again and it's an incredible shame to see Wait for Sleep go. It's a beautiful piece of music that fits perfectly with the masterful Learning to Live. I have no doubt that if Wait for Sleep had been incorporated as the beginning of a 13 minute version of Learning to Live it wouldn't have a single vote.

Now I must listen to Awake 2-3 times before voting.
 
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