Revisiting Dream Theater: Awake
Dream Theater was the band that got me into Prog in my teens. Over the past years, I have moved on to different bands and sounds. Having recently returned to my roots, I decided to revisit the entire discography, one by one. For this purpose, I want to review all 15 studio albums, give my personal impressions of these albums, and rank them - and maybe issue a few hot takes.
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Awake is a goofy record. Now, I like it when artists don’t take themselves completely seriously. But Awake’s goofiness manifests in a series of frankly baffling creative decisions. I have listened to this album like nine times the past few days, and this album still confuses me.
Let’s start with something simple, though. Even in the context of Dream Theater albums, Awake has a supremely ugly cover. Design elements chosen in the most literal way for each of the songs: a clock facing 6 o’clock for 6:00, a spider’s web for Caught in a Web, a mirror for The Mirror, space stuff for Space Dye Vest. You get the gist – it’s terrible.
Luckily, the start to the album is much stronger. 6:00 has a very mechanical metal sound to it that does a decent job at setting the mood for the record, which is overall much harder than the previous album. But then, the goofiness sets in. There are these weird snippets of externally recorded dialogue. Maybe these are references to something that I just don’t get, but I never feel like they go anywhere, not within the song nor as some kind of overarching story over the course of the album. The “6 o’clock on a Christmas Morning” is so memetic that I have listened to this song every Christmas for the last decade or so, but I’m still not sure why it’s here.
On other tracks, the goofiness manifests in weird stylistic decisions. There are several songs on this album where I get the feeling that the band is trying to emulate other band’s sounds. Innocence Faded, with its glam rock intro, synthy keys, and James’ sultry vocals, sounds like DT’s attempt at Toto. Lie even has a section that sounds like Georgy Porgy.
The Silent Man is the band trying for a radio pop song. While I wouldn’t fault anyone for liking these kinds of tracks, they don’t really do it for me. It sounds like they’re trying to be Sting, and I don’t particularly like Sting.
The Mirror is a Thrash Metal track and James even gives us his best Dave Mustaine. His signing on this album is all over the place. He tries to put a lot of grit in his voice to match the harder metal sound of the record, but half the time he doesn’t sound like himself anymore. The worst example, though, is Lie. He does this weird restrained speak-singing and breathy whispers during the verses. Even after multiple listens, I still trip up about it.
Many of the songs also have really out-of-place sections. Scarred has a jazzy intro that sounds like something out of Flying in a Blue Dream but afterwards turns into a solid prog epic.
Erotomania – by all accounts an awesome and technically intricate instrumental that does a great job of serving as an overture to the following songs while also being self-contained – suddenly charges into a Beethoven Symphony for a few bars, without that classical style ever making another appearance on this record or being otherwise connected to the rest of the album.
The Mirror just stops three quarters in to give a prelude of Space Dye Vest only to fade out again and return to its own melody for another fifty seconds of instrumental that don’t go anywhere because then Lie begins with a hard break.
That’s another thing: The order of the songs feels off. Scarred should’ve been the final song on this album – Awake’s Learning to Live, so to speak. But instead, Space Dye Vest is tacked on like a Bonus Track. Now, I like Space Dye Vest. It’s a melancholic piece and makes me emotional every time, but it also doesn’t sound like DT – not this album, not even the larger discography. The sudden break between The Silent Man and The Mirror has to be the most egregious example of this, though. It feels like someone made a mistake during mixing. It’s jarring, it’s confusing, it’s absolutely goofy.
Reading back my own words, I realize how much I have soured on this album. I want to give it some deserved credit. The musicianship on display is off the charts. But then again, that’s the case with any DT record. The wildness and experimentation are something that I genuinely appreciate. There are a couple of songs where it does pay off. Erotomania is pretty great, and I really enjoyed Voices, which is why I haven’t really said anything about it so far. It’s one of the few songs on here that is well put together.
Ultimately, I find Awake to be an experiment gone wrong. The many parts, the different styles and sounds, just don’t come together. It dares to do a lot, which I give it credit for, but succeeds only rarely. Unfortunately, I find that many songs are much better in isolation than if you listen to the whole album. There’s little consistency and the breaks between songs are completely jarring at times, making it an overall pretty frustrating experience. And since I am reviewing the album here, that has to count against it. Listening back to the first couple of albums has given me an appreciation for just how much the band was struggling to find their specific sound early on. Awake is a great example of that. An album that does a little bit of everything, but no single sing consistently.
