On this day · 34 years ago · 1992
34 Years Ago Today: Dream Theater's Images and Words Redefines Progressive Metal
Dream Theater auditioned nearly 200 singers before finding James LaBrie. The album that followed became the record that taught a generation of guitarists what progressive metal could sound like.
By Jaxon, Metal-rhythm desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Dream Theater released its second album, Images and Words, on July 7, 1992, through Atco Records, the first to feature James LaBrie on vocals after the band auditioned nearly 200 singers. Lead single Pull Me Under became the band's only Top 10 hit. The album went RIAA gold, remains Dream Theater's best-selling record, and Guitar World later ranked it seventh on its list of 1992's top guitar albums, cementing John Petrucci's early reputation.
Finding a singer, then finding a sound
After Charlie Dominici left Dream Theater, the band auditioned close to 200 singers from around the country before John Petrucci, John Myung, Kevin Moore, and Mike Portnoy found James LaBrie, then fronting the Canadian glam metal band Winter Rose. Per Wikipedia's account of the album, LaBrie sent in an audition tape, the band brought him in for a short jam session, and he was named the new singer on the spot. He has fronted Dream Theater ever since. With LaBrie in place, the band signed a seven-album deal with Atco Records and began recording in late 1991 at BearTracks Studios in Suffern, New York, and the Hit Factory in New York City.
Images and Words arrives, July 7, 1992
Dream Theater's second studio album, Images and Words, came out July 7, 1992, on Atco Records, the band's own site confirms. The sessions were tense: producer David Prater reportedly locked the band out of the studio at points and pushed drummer Mike Portnoy to record with triggered snare and kick samples rather than his own kit sound, the same snare sample Prater was using on FireHouse's Hold Your Fire around the same time. Dream Theater originally pitched the record as a double album; Atco said no, and several songs were cut. One of them, "A Change of Seasons," was re-recorded years later and released as its own EP in 1995.
The album that made Petrucci's name
Lead single "Pull Me Under" got heavy MTV and radio play and became Dream Theater's only Top 10 hit on Billboard's Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, a distinction it still holds. The album itself was a slow commercial build rather than an instant smash, peaking at number 61 on the Billboard 200, but it has since sold more than 600,000 copies, earned the band's only RIAA gold certification, and stands as Dream Theater's best-selling record to date. On the guitar side, Guitar World later ranked Images and Words seventh on its list of the top 10 guitar albums of 1992, and the solo on "Under a Glass Moon" turned up on at least one published ranking of the genre's best guitar solos. It's the record most often credited with establishing Petrucci's technical, melodic lead style, years before he became one of Ernie Ball's most visible artists.
Regular Slinky Cobalt (.010–.046)
Why this one: Not what Petrucci played on Images and Words in 1992, Cobalt didn't exist yet, but his documented 6-string set today, and the closest sourced starting point if his current prog-metal rhythm tone is what brought you here.
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