Dream Theater Will Play Entire New Album on February European Tour
Last week Dream Theater sent a cryptic email to their newsletter subscribers presenting two options — The Great Northern Empire and The Ravenskill Rebel Militia — and teasing fans to “join” both. Their official website was updated with the same, leading DT fanboys like yours truly to speculate that Berklee’s most famous dropouts could be plotting the release of a double album.
We haven’t got any news one way or the other on that, but now there is also this: Dream Theater have announced they’ll play their forthcoming new album (whatever it may be called) in its entirely on their upcoming European tour, set to launch February 18th in London.
That’s a hella ballsy move that I’m sure will be very controversial once fans realize they’ve paid good money to hear a bunch of songs they don’t know. Iron Maiden did a similar thing at one point — on the A Matter of Life and Death tour, I believe — and fans were pretty peeved they had to sit through an hour of new stuff before getting to hear the hits. People still reference that tour in trepidation every time Maiden announce a new run.
And if DT are in fact releasing a double album… ye gads! While I’m sure some super-duper-uper DT fanboys will think it’s cool, 98% of people are gonna bored out of their skulls.
From the band’s perspective I can certainly understand why they’d wanna do this — an artist is ALWAYS most excited about his or her newest work, and playing “Pull Me Under” and “Home” night after night must get beyond tiring — I’m just not sure it’s realistic to expect fans to share that enthusiasm, especially before they’ve ever even heard a note (save a song or two that’ll probably have been released online by then).
In any case, it’ll be interesting to see how this shapes up. Keep your eyes peeled. Here are the dates, with more to be announced soon:
Feb. 18 – London, England @ Palladium
Feb. 22 – Amsterdam, Holland @ Carre Theater
Feb. 28 – Oslo, Norway @ Konserthus
Mar. 02 – Stockholm, Sweden @ Cirkus
Mar. 05 – Paris, France @ Palais des Congres
Mar. 06 – Paris, France @ Palais des Congres
Mar. 18 – Milan, Italy @ Teatro Degli Arcimboldi
