WANT WANT WANT! DREAM THEATER SCENES FROM A MEMORY VINYL

Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes From a Memory stands as Dream Theater’s best album, the crowning accomplishment of a lengthy career that itself is quite the crowning accomplishment. It’s rare that a band’s 5th album — or 4th, or 3rd, or 6th — is the one that’s almost universally considered their best (“I only ever really liked their FIRST album, brah!”), but amongst Dream Theater fans the opinion is nearly unanimous: Scenes From a Memory was (and still is) beyond incredible. I know it, you know, the band members themselves know it.

So it’s fitting that Dream Thater has decided to reissue Scenes as a 2x LP gatefold 180 gram vinyl set. Bonerz!

I’m not intimately familiar with Dream Theater’s vinyl release history, but from what I can tell it falls into two categories: 1) albums that were released back when vinyl was actually still a viable mainstream music format, 2) albums that were released in the past few years when vinyl became cool again. Combine that large gap with the fact that Scenes has become legendary in the 12 (!) years since its release, and, well… the planets have aligned. Peep that Black Friday (Nov 25) release date for the very fair price of $29.99.

A 15th anniversary Scenes tour in 2014, complete with voice actors, full choir and all the bells and whistles, seems inevitable! It could also provide the perfect opportunity for the band and Mike Portnoy to kiss and make nice. I love Mangini, but watching the band play Scenes in full without Portnoy would just be weird; his facial expressions and stick flips are permanently etched into my brain from the Scenes DVD.

-VN