The cover of Dream Theater's fifteenth album represents the Kjeragbolten, a strange rock wedged between two cliffs in the Kjerag mountain in Norway. To reach it is a real challenge for hikers and requires an excellent physical condition. From there to see it as a metaphor of what awaits you when listening to "A View From The Top Of The World", there is only one step that can be easily crossed. Frustrated by the absence of tours due to the pandemic, the band has put all its energy into the composition of a resolutely progressive metal album, in all its complexity and in the literal sense of the word, because if this new album is in the continuity of "Distance Over Time", it is even more metal.
No ballads, monstrous riffs, titanic compositions, a technique inaccessible to the vast majority of musicians on the planet, no doubt, the Americans are in an Olympic shape. The opening title, 'The Alien', is enough to define what makes the strength of Dream Theater: a drastic musical requirement, a quality of execution out of the common and superb melodies driven by a John Petrucci who, once again, imposes all his talent and all his class. And so much the worse if some reproach it to them in the name of the sacrosanct and arch-rebated absence of feeling, which, in this precise case as in many others, does not have any direction. After 35 years of career, the band has known for a long time that the most important thing is to compose music that resembles them and that will satisfy the fans, the real ones. And there is no doubt that this album is reserved for them.
Of course, Dream Theater does Dream Theater, even to the point of flirting with nostalgia on 'Invisible Monster' which refers to the compositions that the band could write in the 90s. But there again, it is so well done that it is impossible to reproach it. Especially since "A View From The Top Of The World" was composed in total freedom and without any constraint. The titans of progressive metal now have their own fully equipped HQ, the DTHQ (Dream Theater Headquarters), a place where John Petrucci's solo album, "Terminal Velocity" and the latest Liquid Tension Experiment, "Lte3", have already been composed, and which allows them to maintain a real cohesion between the band members.
This cohesion is obvious in more than one way. First of all in the Dantesque guitar-keyboard duels during which it is sometimes very difficult to distinguish between the two instruments, so much the play of Jordan Rudess is more and more in tune with that of Petrucci ('Answering The Call', 'Sleeping Giant'). Then in the irreproachable production of the album which really does justice to the work of John Myung on the bass. Last but not least, because maybe for the first time in ten years, Mike Mangini takes a central place in the band, to the point of almost making us rediscover what an exceptional drummer he is ('The Alien').
Resolutely metal and very heavy (the 8-string lead riff of 'Awaken The Master'), this fifteenth album of Dream Theater is devastating and even globally more joyful and optimistic than usual (the excellent 'Transcending Time'), which doesn't spoil anything and adds to the pleasure that the fans will take to play it over and over again to discover all the nuggets. Only perhaps the epic 'A View From The Top Of The World', from the top of its 20 minutes, remains finally the least convincing track of the album, because of a structure a little less elaborated than the average (for Dream Theater) in spite of a superb atmospheric bridge. Nevertheless, this album is undoubtedly a must of the year and the kings of progressive metal are not ready to be dethroned.