Progressive Metal pioneers Dream Theater are taking on stages across North America with the first edition of their Dreamsonic tour. The tour is running throughout June and July this year and showcases two other, in their own right, influential Prog Metal acts, Devin Townsend and Animals As Leaders.
Dream Theater
Hartford Amphitheater, Bridgeport – 30 June 2023
Words and Photography: Shannon Wilk
Dream Theater
Come 9:30 PM, it was time for the biggest and most influential band of the Progressive Metal genre, Dream Theater. They began their set with a 9-minute, GRAMMY award-winning track – The Alien.
Longtime frontman James LaBrie makes use of the entire stage, running from end to end without missing a single lyric. The second song of the set, Sleeping Giant, starts with an ominous keyboard part played by James Rudess. The crowd comes alive, chanting “Hey! hey! Hey!” in the song’s breakdown section.
Dream Theater takes it back to ’94’s Awake album with Caught In A Web. John Petrucci’s guitar tone blends so perfectly with Rudess’s keyboards creating such an interesting soundscape. Petrucci now wields a 7-string guitar for their performance of the second track from the band’s 2021 release, A View From The Top Of The World.
When attending a Dream Theater show, fans can expect a wide range of songs from the group’s fifteen studio albums released to date. If known for one thing, it’s their extended instrumental sections in tunes, and this is showcased greatly through About To Crash (Reprise)/Losing Time/Grand Finale.
Now it was time for Dream Theater’s most well-known track, Pull Me Under. This was the song where every person in that room sang the chorus.
Dream Theater put together quite an encore. Their song The Spirit Carries On featured Tosin Abasi and Devin Townsend, as well as his guitarist and drummer Mike Keneally and Darby Todd, respectively.
The Dreamsonic tour is the quintessential Progressive Metal tour we’ve been waiting for. Dream Theater has stated this will be “a reoccurring musical event that will deliver history-making nights of amazing music for many years to come,” so be sure to catch it!
You can read the Devin Townsend and Animals As Leaders report here.