Anyone else sick of lazy criticism of Dream Theater?
On other subreddits and elsewhere online, I often see people complaining about Dream Theater. That’s fine; I understand that those of us who love this band are, let’s be honest, a bit unusual. I also realise most people are never going to enjoy music like this.
What bothers me isn’t that people dislike Dream Theater. It’s the dismissive way the criticism is often framed.
You’ll see comments along the lines of: “making music complicated doesn’t make it good”, “it’s just noodling”, “there’s no emotion” or “they don’t have any good ideas” (I'm paraphrasing but these are all sentiments I have seen before).
The first point is true, but only halfway. Obviously, complicated music is not automatically good. But complicated music is not automatically bad either. You still have to judge it on composition, structure, feel, dynamics, riffs, melodies, harmonies, rhythm, development and whether it actually works as music.
For me, Dream Theater's music works extremely well. Do they show off? Definitely. Do they sometimes get carried away? Yes. Can they be cheesy? Hell yes. But reducing the band to “just noodling” seems incredibly lazy to me.
At their best, they combine classical structure, long-form composition, heavy riffs, odd meters, recurring motifs, strong melodies, solos, harmonies, dynamic contrasts and shifts in a way that can be hugely rewarding. That’s not the same thing as “a bunch of guys showing off”. The virtuosity is part of the appeal, but it isn’t the whole appeal.
Dream Theater isn’t for everyone; that’s fine. I just wish the criticism was sometimes a bit more thoughtful than “technical = soulless”. When I see that, I roll my eyes.
I also don’t see how anyone can listen to much of Dream Theater’s discography and come away thinking they’re lacking in emotion. John Petrucci is often dismissed as “just a shredder”, but many of his solos are incredibly expressive, and there are a lot of interesting concepts behind the music.
You don’t have to like Scenes from a Memory, but I find it very hard to understand how someone could listen to it and conclude that the band are emotionless robots.
Does this kind of criticism bother anyone else, or am I being too precious about it?