So I guess last month was my "latent" period (haha, freudian psychosexual stage reference), I guess I just got lazy. Anyhow, I came across this song on YouTube a while ago and I was genuinely impressed. If you were keeping up with the Dream Theater "news" you would know that their original drummer Mike Portnoy had left from the band and they were left looking for a new drummer who turned out to be Mike Mangini. As some YouTube video commenters say it, the real royal wedding was Mangini and Dream Theater which I thought was pretty clever. Enough about Mike Mangini, who was mentioned in a previous post that you are free to read if you wish, and allow me to move on to the actual musical structure of "On The Backs Of Angels"
The beginning is a rather low frequency electrical sound typical of Dream Theater. As the song progresses, more instruments chime in, rather like a layer cake. This mix of instruments and interesting rhythms adds to the "intrigue" factor of the song. The song continues in a similar fashion, adding more spontaneous runs from the electric keyboard and guitar. About 1 minute into the song, we can hear the general melody played by the Petrucci, but of course, as many DT songs go, there is never simply one recurring melody, this song, similar to many others is highly polyphonic. LaBrie now begins to sing in his usual ethereal voice which pairs well with the heavy instrumental role within the song. The song generally consists of little sections some of which containing vocals and others which do not. It continues in this manner containing little unexpected rhythms and runs. How could I forget, the piano solo is awesome =]. If Maria and Tommy are up for it, maybe we could do an acoustic version of the song. Anyhow, back to the actual song, the lyrics are pretty powerful in my opinion. "Lead me like a lamb to the slaughter" really caught my attention. The album title couldn't be more fitting, the change from Portnoy to Mangini is definitely "A Dramatic Turn of Events". Once the whole album comes out, I'll make sure to do a post on it. As always, thanks for reading and make sure to check out all the other posts that my friends and I have written.
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