As the more eagle-eyed of you may have noticed, I'm a fan of Dream Theater. So it'll come as no surprise to you that I'm reviewing their new collection
Greatest Hit ( … and 21 other pretty cool songs), a title which plays on the fact that only one of their songs ever got significant radio airplay.
The band have been around for a little over 20 years, and this collection draws from most of that time, omitting anything from most recent studio album
Systematic Chaos and also début album
When Dream and Day Unite.
There are two discs, titled
The Dark Side (the metallic, says the press release) and
The Light Side (the melodic). This immediately creates a problem, in that the vast majority of their best work would be categorised in disc one. Indeed, it shows, with a tracklist on disc two that reeks of trying to fill space to satisfy the concept they set themselves. So what do we get for our money?
We start off with two remixes of
Pull Me Under and
Take The Time from 1992's
Images and Words. These are a breath of fresh air (along with the remix of
Another Day that's on disc two), as the original production was overdone to a hellish degree, with all sense of emotion removed from the tracks and leaving them like the aural equivalent of the Bride of Wildenstein. This has been rectified with the new versions, and just leaves me wishing they'd remix the whole album, because it sorely needs it. (And while they're choosing tracks from that album to include, where the hell is
Metropolis Pt.1?)
Four of the 22 tracks are edited versions, with mixed results. It's good that they've trimmed out some of the excess in the longer songs (although it'd have been better if they done it at the time … ) and it makes
Misunderstood infinitely snappier and more listenable, but at the same time they've trimmed about two minutes too many out of
Home, and
Solitary Shell and
Lie were both short enough that you get the impression they've been edited to fit them on the album, not because they needed it.
We also have an ‘alternate album mix’ of
Through Her Eyes, although the song's so shit to begin with that the best alternate version of that would be where someone set fire to the master tapes before they left the studio.
The rest of the tracks are as they appeared originally (
To Live Forever was a b-side, but most hardcore fans will already have it as part of the
Cleaning out the Closet CD a few years ago), and display an over-riding theme: Dream Theater are very talented musicians with a lot of excellent songs, but (with two, maybe three exceptions) they can't write ballads to save themselves, so the second disc becomes somewhat of a chore to sit through.
The main problem with this album (as it is with any ‘Best of’ collection) is that it's almost impossible for people to agree what constitutes the best of a band's output. So some bright spark decided that the risible
Endless Sacrifice merited a place on the album, and left off
In the Name of God. They gave us a b-side, which was nice of them, and then undid all their good work by not choosing
Raise The Knife as the b-side to include, given that it's vastly superior to what we did get. And maybe it's just personal choice, but I'd have liked to see them find space for
A Change of Seasons, as anyone buying this is missing out on the epic songs, of which that's the best example.
So to the key question in any review - is this worthy of my hard-earned cash? If you're new to Dream Theater and looking for a way in, you could do a lot worse than this. It provides a fair balance of the different types of songs they do and there's only really one stinker on the album. If you're already a fan, it's more difficult. You probably own most of the songs already, so it comes down to whether you want to fork out for the three remixes. I'd normally be loath to recommend buying an album for a couple of remixes, since I think it's a pretty shoddy marketing ploy. On this occasion, however, they
are excellent, and totally transform the songs, breathing new life into them. I'd almost go so far as to say that they're essential to hear, so it really comes down to how much you're willing to pay to do so. Ultimately, the collection does exactly what it says on the tin.
Greatest Hit ( … and 21 other pretty cool songs) is released on Warner on April 7th.
http://www.myspace.com/dreamtheater
Tracklisting:
Disc 1 - The Dark Side
1.Pull Me Under (2007 Remix)
2.Take The Time (2007 Remix)
3.Lie (Edited Version)
4.Peruvian Skies
5.Home (Edited Version)
6.Misunderstood (Edited Version)
7.The Test That Stumped Them All
8.As I Am
9.Endless Sacrifice
10.The Root Of All Evil
11.Sacrificed Sons
Disc 2 - The Light Side
1.Another Day (2007 Remix)
2.To Live Forever
3.Lifting Shadows Off A Dream
4.The Silent Man
5.Hollow Years
6.Through Her Eyes (Alternate Album Mix)
7.The Spirit Carries On
8.Solitary Shell (Edited Version)
9.I Walk Beside You
10.The Answer Lies Within
11.Disappear
