Awake

Awake is a fulfilling third album on which Dream Theater, stepping away from the previous work’s openness, draws emotion sinking inward with heavier guitar, dense keyboards and tightly tense song construction. It is the last studio work the keyboardist Kevin Moore belonged. The complex rhythm and long developments, by no means ending as mere display of technique, powerfully widen the deep anxiety and lift James LaBrie’s singing holds. A darker, more introspective record. From the powerful drive of the opener “6:00” and the aggression of “Caught in a Web” to a cut like “Innocence Faded,” every song is engaging, while songs including the suite-like “Erotomania” and cuts like “Voices,” “The Mirror” and “The Silent Man” convey the work’s fullness. The guitar and keyboards, sometimes colliding and sometimes supporting the same melody, finely switch the songs’ light and shade. A record that, while firmly keeping progressive metal’s precision, became a particularly dense one in the band’s discography by greatly increasing its tone and emotional weight. One wants to carefully follow not only the long songs’ outstanding technique but the moments a riff powerfully pushes up the singing and the moments the whole starts moving again after quiet. A powerful, engaging masterpiece showing the band’s deepened expression — a record where the band’s fullness shines.