Dream Theater, 10th November 2024, Poolen, Copenhagen, Denmark

Photo: Zoran www.sonic-shot.com

It’s been marketed and received and a gran return of Dream Theater even though, the only thing that happened is that the band’s drummer and one of founding members, Mike Portnoy has returned to the band after 14 years of absence. But Mike Portnoy has always been much more than just that. He has always taken a big portion of press work, co-produced several of the band’s albums, was, for the most part, in charge of setlists, played a key role when it comes to album concepts, artwork and what not. Portnoy is also an acclaimed and prolific drummer who has also been rather busy since parting ways with Dream Theater. Since then, he has worked with countless super-groups such as Sons Of Apollo, The Winery Dogs, Flying Colors, Metal Allegiance, Transatlantic and The Neal Morse Band. In his absence, drumming duties have been filled eminently by Mike Mangini, at times even superiorly so, but his hole in the band was never as impactful as Portnoy’s was.

Now that Portnoy is back in the band, it will be interesting how will that affect Dream Theater’s music. Judging from the first single from the forthcoming album, not much has changed. But over the decades Dream Theater has built the style that made them one of the biggest names in the Prog Metal genre, so it would be odd expecting some drastic change, just because the guy who played a massive part in building the band to what they are now.

Past few decades have taught us that absence of a band often results in the same band becoming significantly bigger, once they “return”. Just think of what happened with Tool when they released Fear Inoculum, their first album in 13 years, or how much bigger Porcupine Tree became after getting back together a couple of years ago.

Now, Dream Theater didn’t break up and during the past 14 years, they have released five studio albums, but Portnoy-effect is rather significant and on this tour the band has booked some significantly larger venues. Except Copenhagen, apparently, because they were set to play the new concert venue Poolen with capacity of 2500 people. That is the smallest venue the band has played in Copenhagen since they played Vega in 2000. Sure, they also played DR Koncerthuset, with capacity of 1800, but those were special sitting gigs in a classic concert hall.

But Poolen was sold out for this an-evening-with type of show and the band opened it just like most of the fans could hope for with “Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper” and followed it couple of classics from the 2000 sequel to that very song, Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory. Talking about pleasing in the crowd. And it didn’t stop there. Right after they ripped into “The Mirror” from Awake, which just turned 30-years. Band’s keyboardist Jordan Rudess took the centre of the stage with his keytar towards the end of the song. It was fun, but it did take some of the sheer heaviness of that last section of the song where focus is on big fat groove and massive riff by band’s guitarist John Petrucci. The band elegantly closed the song by sliding into the solo from ‘Lie’ from the same album.

Last time Dream Theater played Copenhagen in 2022, they didn’t play a single song from landmark albums Images & Words and Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory but this time around these albums seemed to be a cornerstone of the setlist. That being said, Dream Theater’s setlist this evening was just about a perfect representation of the enormous body of work. They made sure to include live-classics but also represented most eras of the band with good portion of songs that are not necessarily expected like one of the highlights of their career, the title-track from their 2005 Octavarium. Another interesting one was performing “Hollow Years” in its demo version form.

Potnoy is back at taking care of setlists like did before, but he’s also back in a band that is different from the band he left many years ago. Therefore, the last night’s setlist also included couple of songs from the time when Portnoy was not in the band, with “This Is the Life” from A Dramatic Turn of Events working especially well.

An-evening-with concept is something the band has done many times and what it basically means is that there is no support acts and the show, including the intermission, runs for some three hours. This gives a band time to dig into a significant portion of their 15 studio albums as well as giving the band room to play several of those long epic songs, such as the above-mentioned “Octavarium”, which was one of the highlights of the evening perfectly encapsulating just about everything this band is about.

But not everything was peachy this cold evening in Copenhagen. The choice of venue, for instance was far from optimal and while Dream Theater might not have been able to sell out some of the big venues they could’ve sold many more tickets and also played at the venue which is more suited for them. Poolen will most likely work very well for the upcoming rave parties, the Faithless concert and most likely for different Heavy Metal concerts, but it just didn’t work for Dream Theater. And the band seemed to think so as well.

There were also few technical difficulties, such as a big curtain in front of the stage not dropping when it should, but the main problem was the issues with James LaBrie’s vocals. For the most part he did a fine job but on some songs his vocals just didn’t work as they should. Above-mentioned “Mirror” and “Pull Me Under” suffered the most. He also had some issues with the flow in his addressing of the crowd. On the other hand for the most part he did his job professionally and there was even a rather heartfelt episode when he realized that one of his rings has fallen off his finger and into the crowd. He asked the crowd to return the ring only because it was given to him by his late brother. And of course before you knew it was returned and the member of the crowd was given a heartfelt thanks as well as some of Portnoy’s drumsticks.

An-evening-with shows come with intermission which in this case was 20 minutes, during which some of the crowd decided to leave the show, most likely because the doors were open during the entire first part of the show, which resulted in the venue being very cold. Majority of the crowd was wearing their jackets, jumpers and some even their hats and scarfs.

The band opened the act two with an uninteresting video looking back at Dream Theater’s recording history. Such a look back could’ve been done much shorter and in a much more interesting way with footage from those periods instead of incorporating album covers on CG footage. The first song of Act II of the show was “Night Terror” from their upcoming new album Parasomnia. The song has been out for a month now, and generally it’s a fine song that checks most Dream Theater boxes, and it also worked fine live. But one of the unlikely highlights of the evening came in form of epic “Stream of Consciousness” from 2003’s Train of Thought. Despite it being 11-minute long instrumental, it was one of the songs that got the crowd going the most and generally the performance of it just bursted with energy.

After leaving the stage after “Octavarium” some more people left, but majority stayed to witness the band deliver a couple of more favourites from, Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory, especially “Act II: Scene Eight: The Spirit Carries On”, worked eminently. The above-mentioned “Pulled Me Under” closed the show, and together with the opener “Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper” gave this feel of full circle. It was truly a perfect setlist, Portnoy has chosen.

Last night was a night of contrasts and in general it was a very good evening for Dream Theater fans, but it didn’t feel like sort of a glorious return it was set to be. The band will be back in Copenhagen in half a year, playing couple of hundred meters from Poolen at next year’s Copenhell and while they are not a typical festival-band, perhaps Copenhell will serve as the glorious return last night should’ve been.

 

SETLIST

Act I:

1. Metropolis Pt. 1: The Miracle and the Sleeper
2. Act I: Scene Two: I. Overture 1928
3. Act I: Scene Two: II. Strange Déjà Vu
4. The Mirror
5. Panic Attack
6. Barstool Warrior
7. Hollow Years
8. Constant Motion
9. As I Am

Act II

1. Night Terror
2. Under a Glass Moon
3. This Is the Life
4. Vacant
5. Stream of Consciousness
6. Octavarium
   ——————–
7. Act II: Scene Six: Home
8. Act II: Scene Eight: The Spirit Carries On
9. Pull Me Under