Dream Theater

Pale Blue Dot is probably guaranteed, there are videos of Rudess practicing it and it is the main album epic.

Five songs sounds about right. They basically have an hour and a half of time to fill after Scenes and whatever the encore will be (which will probably be something special like Glass Prison or Octavarium). You’re probably only going to get a half hour of new music at the most. At least with DT you know the songs they don’t get to on this tour will be played eventually.
 
The one thing I haven't seen is rumors of a rotating setlist. It makes sense to do so considering DT's reputation for playing all of their songs live.
 
They don’t rotating set lists anymore though. I am guessing that this tour, like most of their recent tours, will have some sort of flow in the lighting/video production that prevents songs from being rotated in and out.
 
So, I decided to do a setlist prediction.

Live Distance Over Time?

1: Untethered Angel
2: Surrender to Reason
3: New Millennium
4: Paralyzed
5: Fall into the Light

6: A Mind Beside Itself
I. Erotomania
II. Voices
III. The Silent Man

7: At Wit's End

-------------------

8: Scenes From A Memory

-------------------

Encore:

9: The Glass Prison
10: Pale Blue Dot

...this probably won't be it, but this is at least what I think the setlist could be.
 
Micro reviews:

A Change of Seasons - the first thing DT's done since Metropolis Pt. 1 that really resonated with me. Great track.
Falling Into Infinity - kinda wanky garbage, isn't it?
 
Micro reviews:

A Change of Seasons - the first thing DT's done since Metropolis Pt. 1 that really resonated with me. Great track.
Falling Into Infinity - kinda wanky garbage, isn't it?

ACOS is amazing. One of their best.

Other than The Astonishing, FII might just be their least wanky album ever. I think you might be listening to the wrong band.
 
FII takes a while to get into. New Millenium, Lines in the Sand, and Trial of Tears are the big standouts.
 
I like this as an alternative track listing to Falling Into Infinity:

Side 1:
1: Raise the Knife
2: New Milennium
3: Peruvian Skies
4: Hollow Years

Side 2:
5: Hell’s Kitchen
6: Lines In the Sand
7: Anna Lee
8: Trial of Tears

A long winded and at times boring album with some of their weakest material becomes much bolder and interesting. It’s also sequenced just like the classic prog rock albums of the 70s, which a lot of the music harkens back to. It hurts to leave off Take Away My Pain though, I quite like that one.
 
I think this works better personally.

1. Raise the Knife
2. New Millenium
3. Cover My Eyes
4. Peruvian Skies
5. Burning My Soul (Hell’s Kitchen middle)
6. Lines in the Sand
7. Take Away My Pain
8. The Way It Used To Be
9. Trial of Tears
 
Lines in the Sand and Trial of Tears are up there with the band's best imo. I'm partial to Hollow Years as well. A weaker album overall though.
 
I like a lot of the ideas on the album more than the songs themselves. They were trying a lot of new things sonically and FII is the first DT album that doesn’t really sound dated. I wish they would’ve explored that sound further, maybe under less pressure from outside forces.
The stories about record label meddling and outside producers/writers are pretty well known but there were benefits that came from that. Kevin Shirley was a good fit for the album.

The demos for this album were released by the band and it’s one of the most essential demo releases for a rock album imo. You hear the band’s original vision for the album and how many of the songs went through drastic changes. A lot of fans come away from that thinking FII could’ve been a great album, but my takeaway was actually that the demo version is even more of a mess. The demo of You Not Me, for example, is just as bad (if not worse) than what was originally put out. Also things like making Hell’s Kitchen a single track instead of being the middle of Burning My Soul.
 
Lines In The Sand is
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