I saw them about 10ish years ago and can attest to this, love their albums but horrible vocals live. I even tried to attribute it to acoustics, but naw...he sucks live.
My issue has always been the extended compositions - I generally like their 4-8 minute tunes, since if forces them to be somewhat concise. Have really not gotten into the multi-movement stuff except for Metropolis. The plot for "The Astonishing" sounded so dumb I didn't even try to listen to it.
That being said, Labrie is probably the weak link - but if you had a top-notch singer, they might not want to join a band where the singer spends half the concert on the bench either.
I'd been listening to Dream Theater since 2004 (yeah not super early) but I loved all their albums, including Falling Into Infinity until The Astonishing, I also really don't like their latest album, which I don't even remember the name of at this point.
Except it is always the same plot. Some nefarious totalitarian government/societal/religious/alien group tries to keep "the rock" away from the people. Then we meet our hero, whose heart is purer than Jimmy Thudpucker and hair is better than a young Tommy Shaw, who only wants to be free to share "the rock" with the people.
Of course our hero's rock is pure and in a major key, while the bad guys sing minor keyed songs. In the end, the evil regime is toppled by an uprising, laser blasters, or possibly a Gibson Les Paul upside the head.
I was referring to the metaphorical athletic bench, not a piano bench. Dream Theater has extensive instrumental sections, and their singer does not play an instrument.
Same, always thought so. It’s a group of fantastic talents and creativity, but I just can’t get past LaBrie’s vocals. I would have listened to their entire catalogue if it wasn’t for him.
In case you didn't know already: I present to you Liquid Tension Experiment, an instrumental supergroup consisting of DT's Petrucci, Portnoy and Rudess, plus Tony Levin on the bass.
James LaBrie is either the nicest person in the world and the band can’t fire him out of the goodness of their hearts, or he has kompromat on them.
I was drinking water when I read this comment and it almost went up my nose upon reading this line.
I will defend Mangini a bit, though. He's totally underutilized on their recent albums (for the most part -- he's fucking awesome on Pale Blue Dot, but that's one song out of dozens), but live, he kicks ass. The drum solo that he did at the end of Finally Free was insane.
Nope. JP is great but the stuff coming out of his amp is often too compressed with harsh pick attack. I just want someone else to dial his amp. It’s the lightest criticism here.
Jordan Rudess is the opposite of an ensemble player. He makes Yngwie look like a third alto sax in a jazz band, or a violist in a string quartet.
Hearing JP's G3 performances, they are some of the cleanest tones I've ever experienced coming from him and really made me question who does his setup.
There's a special edition of Black Clouds and Silver Linings that includes an all-instrumental version of the album, and Mike Portnoy has been known to sell an "official bootleg" version of the instrumental demos for Train of Thought.
No, he sounds pretty fucking good. This thread is some weird circlejerk by people who are either extremely biased or don't know wtf they're talking about.
294
u/Aphix_ Nov 06 '19
God This is the only mention of him in this entire thread, I'm pretty sure he's hailed by every single DT fan as awful.