Music is a great way for one to express their feelings and thoughts on any subject. Music is also a great way to tell a story; it can be a long story spread out through a whole album or summed up in a short five minute song. Some musicians can creatively weave words together to tell a great story. Some musicians even write different songs on different albums that tells a story, and you may not even know it. There are only a few musicians I know that do this, but the best example would be Mike Portnoy from the band Dream Theater. He wrote a story throughout five songs spanning five albums and seven years. The story is about his battle against alcoholism, and is called the twelve step suite. The music was written collaboratively with the other band members and all the lyrics were written by Mike. The music was creatively written; it’s almost impossible to tell the songs are related unless you have music knowledge or read and understood the lyrics. Each song is divided into multiple parts which add up to make the twelve steps to cure alcoholism and occur in this order: “The Glass Prison” which includes parts 1-3 (“Reflection”, “Restoration”, and “Revelation”) “This Dying Soul” which includes parts 4-5 (“Reflections of Reality (Revisited)” and “Release”) “The Root of All Evil” which includes parts 6-7 (“Ready” and “Remove”) “Repentance” which includes parts 8-9 (“Regret” and “Restitution”) “The Shattered Fortress” which includes parts 10-12 (“Restraint”, Recieve”, and “Responsible”).
As you can tell there is a lot of music with each song being no less than eight minutes and total time being 57:16. “The Glass Prison” clocks in at 13:53 making it the longest song in the series. This song incorporates a seven string guitar which adds an extra low string instead of a normal six string guitar. The rhythm of the song is blistering fast and a very tough one to play and also very heavy. There are many sections which are very memorable and will have you re-listening a lot.
“This Dying Soul” clocks in at 11:28 and has parts that were taken from “The Glass Prison”. If you are not paying attention while listening you would have no idea these two songs are related. Yes, it has parts that are the same but the parts are played in a different key which is why musical knowledge is important in being able to figure out that the songs are related (there is a “unwritten rule” that musicians follow which is not to make any two songs sound the same unless they are in some way related). Basically saying something is in a different key means the actual notes played are different from before, but the pattern is the same which makes it sound similar. This song also uses the seven string guitar and is also very fast and very heavy.
“The Root of All Evil” is the shortest song clocking in at 8:26. In this song the guitarist, John Petrucci, goes back to using a six string guitar in E flat tuning. Which means the guitar is tuned slightly lower than normal. This song is not as heavy as the first two songs and has more of a rock and roll type feel with a very catch chorus which you will be singing to yourself all the time. “The Root of All Evil” also incorporates parts from “This Dying Soul”.
“Repentance” Is a very mellow song played on a six string guitar tuned normally. There is a mix of clean tones, acoustic guitars, and synthesizers. The intro guitar to this song shares a same melody that occurs in the first three songs, but other than that the song is almost completely different musically. Although, you can tell it’s related to the other parts because the lyrics are easy to understand and it lines up with the first parts. The song also features drummer Mike Portnoy singing the intro line “Hello mirror. So glad to see you my friend, it’s been a while.” There is a very lively and uplifting distorted solo in the middle, which is one of my favorite Dream Theater moments. Finally the song closes with other musicians telling choices they made which they now regret.
“The Shattered Fortress” is the final song in the series and clocks in at 12:49. This song goes back to using the seven string guitar but is not as heavy or fast as the first two songs. In “The Shattered Fortress” almost all parts are recycled from the previous four songs and it is very easy to tell this is next in the series. The ending to this song is one of the best parts Dream Theater has ever written (to me at least). It has a John Petrucci guitar solo which is very fast and sounds perfect, followed by a great guitar riff and drum beat under a powerful vocal line sung perfectly by James Labrie. The song ends with the same guitar part which started “The Glass Prison”. These are the only two times that riff is used, which signals the beginning and finally the end.
Finally when the last riff in “The Shattered Fortress” plays it makes you think back to the very first song in the series. It makes you think about the long road Mike took to cure his addiction to alcohol and makes you think about all the time and effort that went into these songs. It is almost as if all of Mike’s emotions throughout the whole journey are all spilled out to you one last time. When you are into music as much as I am the end of this song really reaches out and speaks to you. It is very hard to explain so I recommend just listening to these songs. I think that no matter what kind of music you like everyone will find something they like in at least one of these songs.
Dream Theater. “The Glass Prison.” Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. Elektra, 2002. Digital file.
Dream Theater. “This Dying Soul.” Train of Thought. Elektra, 2003. Digital file.
Dream Theater. “The Root of All Evil.” Octavarium. Atlantic, 2005. Digital file.
Dream Theater. “Repentance.” Systematic Chaos. Roadrunner, 2007. Digital file.
Dream THeater. “The Shattered Fortress.” Black Clouds & Silver Linings. Roadrunner, 2009. Digital file.
“Twelve-step Suite.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 5 October 2013. Web. 5 October 2008.
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