Saturday, April 6, 2013

**** Greatest Hit (… and 20 Other Pretty Cool Songs) by Dream Theater – Strikingly Complete


When I first heard Dream Theater was going to put together a greatest hits package, I thought, “That’s impossible because almost all their songs are good.”  I couldn’t even imagine how they were going to pull this one off, but they did!

They put all the songs that in my opinion didn’t fit well on their albums, it seemed as if every album had one extra song, but I was not conscious of this when I thought of what they would do for a greatest hits package.  Well, you may wonder how these songs all fit together; the answer is that the songs are more mild than most of the other stuff on their albums.  It was always as if Dream Theater always had a token slow song, and what’s more they even released that song though usually it would get no attention for radio airplay.

Perhaps, I should have thought otherwise, but because I usually thought the released song was weaker than the rest of the album, it never occurred to me that they would put them all on 2 cds and repackage it.  As far as I know, this album, repackaging all the slow songs together ends up hitting the sonic spot on certain days, and is well worth listening to.  You just have to be in the mood for it.  Even for people that love the heaviest music, I imagine there can come a time when you feel like you need a rest.  Let me tell you, or even warn you, there are many musical rests about on this collection, as this is not the typical busy, hard hitting music I think of most when I think of Dream Theater.

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