Dream Theater: When Dream & Day Unite [MUSIC ON VINYL]

Why you'll love it

Music On Vinyl presses it on 180g vinyl in the EU, with a lyrics and credits insert. It's the debut that set out the Dream Theater sound, and the sole album with singer Charlie Dominici out front.

This edition

• 180g vinyl
• Lyrics and credits insert
• Pressed in the EU
• Numbered
• Stereo mix

About the album

Plenty of bands are named after a local cinema; few of them go on to make records as long as the films. John Petrucci, John Myung and Mike Portnoy met at Berklee in Boston and started out as Majesty, a name taken from Portnoy's comment about the end of Rush's "Bastille Day." A legal threat forced a change, and Portnoy's father suggested Dream Theater, after a movie house near home. With Petrucci's childhood friend Kevin Moore on keyboards and Charlie Dominici singing, they signed to Mechanic/MCA.

They recorded in mid-1988 at Kajem/Victory Studios in Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, a converted gun factory, working nights for three weeks with Terry Date producing. "A Fortune in Lies" opens at full gallop, "Status Seeker" and "Afterlife" were the promotional singles, and the instrumental "The Ytse Jam" (named for Majesty spelled backwards) became a live staple. "The Killing Hand" and "Light Fuse and Get Away" stretch out into the long, many-part epics that defined everything after.

Petrucci later remembered a band of young guys with tunnel vision and a lot of fire, and Portnoy called it the blueprint of the Dream Theater sound. They have since proved that a blueprint can be followed for several decades and a fair few twenty-minute songs.

Also at Kops: more Dream Theater on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Music On Vinyl / MCA (cat# MOVLP2099), a reissue of the 1989 album.