Up-Load UK, Gigs News & reviews Dream Theatre

It's 7pm and the doors to the might venue, the Hammersmith Apollo were due to open half an hour ago, many murmurs are starting to erupt as to whether they will miss part of the might Dream Theater's set or not but eventually the doors are opened up and the crowd shuffle rather swiftly into the venue.

After a 30 minute wait, the lights go out and the outro to 'In The Name Of God', the closing track from the bands last album 'Train Of Thought' fades in and when the last note has been played, opening track from the new album 'Octavarium' called 'The Root Of All Evil' begins, it's time to start the show?

The band explode onto the stage to a nearly full venue, the crowd are jumping up and down and singing along as if they were going to die tomorrow. The band play 5 songs from the new album which go down rather well but the material that really impresses the crowd is the songs taken from 'Images & Words', their breakthrough album.

The first set starts with two songs from 'Octavarium' and then works its way from 1985 up until 2002, taking a song from each album because not only are the band promoting the new album, it is also their 20th anniversary!

During the interval, the writer goes for a drink and adds that he bought a very sexy tour t-shirt, well worth mentioning. No sooner do the crowd sift back into the main hall that the lights go out again and the band explode into 'As I Am', this song gets the best reaction of the night so far, it sends the Hammersmith Apollo absolutely mental!
After this the band play another song off the album mentioned entitled 'Endless Sacrifce' this also gets the same reaction as the latter song.

The rest of the second set, bar the Encore is made entirely of songs from Octavarium, they all get a satisfactory reaction until the intro to the title track starts, it's time for the epic title track, the crowd literally shit their pants! Jordan Rudess extends the intro for five or so minutes then the band come in, it's simply amazing, the most intense part of the gig without a doubt, it eventually builds up and up for a whopping twenty five minutes, until the last four minutes, this is the most amazing part of the song, simply stunning. James LaBrie thanks the crowd and the band leave the stage for about 3 minutes and come back to play a medley of Pull Me Under and Metropolis Pt.1.

This evening the band prove that they are quite simply, one of the most talented bands in heavy metal history, the whole band are simply amazing tonight, especially drummer Mike Portnoy who does not make ANY mistakes for the whole show, but then again, the writer doesn't think any of the band made any mistakes at all! One of the best gigs this writer has ever been to without a doubt?