DREAM THEATER Vocalist Says Integrity Is Key To Band's Success

Andrew Saltmarsh of OzProg.com recently conducted an interview with DREAM THEATER vocalist James LaBrie. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

OzProg.com: "Systematic Chaos" is DREAM THEATER's 10th studio offering over a career of 20 years... with a career as long as yours, and being in a scene that doesn't get as much exposure as other scenes, what do you think has been one of the biggest keys to DREAM THEATER's success?

LaBrie: Well, I think it is the music. I think what's given us the success is the fact the nature of our music isnt neccessarily today's flavour, and never has been, and I think the fact that we've always maintained the integrity throughout [means] that the fans that are into a more progressive style or metal style band tend to still like where we go. I think it's the fact that once we have come in contact with a listener and they've actually heard some of the music, I think it begins a relationship not unlike the relationship I personally had with RUSH when I discovered them ... wanting to continue to listen to each and every album and expect change and expect something new and something experimental, and something exciting, and I think that's what really captured our audience and helped maintain it as well as enlarge it with every outing.

OzProg.com: The band's sound has changed and progressed a lot through the years, and the last few albums have had a few different swings... "Train Of Thought" was much heavier, "Octavarium" got back to more progressive sort of sounds. With "Systematic Chaos", how do you think that sits in the progression of DREAM THEATER's sound?

LaBrie: I think one of the most important things for us personally with the music is to stay contemporary... we always have our fingers on the pulse. Each band member obviously listens to things that are similar to one another, but then we also each have bands that we listen to that not neccesarilly anyone else in the band will... and I think that helps enable us to pull from these [different sources] and bring it into our own writing and our own styles. "Train Of Thought" was a statement that "this is going to be a heavy album," and it was. It was bombastic, it was relentless, it was agressive to the highest extent, and the difference with "Systematic Chaos" is that there's more balance and there's more control over how we're presenting the heaviness. We're giving [the compositions] more atmospheric tones, I think it's more dynamic, and I think there's a good balance with the complexity and technical aspect that goes in there, and it's not over the top. So I think that because of that we're still able to present throughout some of the album the heavy elements that have been with DREAM THEATER and maybe has become more and more evident over the last few years. But I think there's a real good cap on it and I think that we're able to strike up a really good balance between the two worlds, being the progressive and the heavy metal. There's also other styles that we like to explore... and that might be the mellower track, "Repentance", where I look at that more like a TOOL meets PINK FLOYD kind of approach, for me, and then you might say we're touching on something that's a little bit more mainstream when you're talking about a song like "Forsaken", but a little bit more contempory sounding. But to me, there's a lot more balance and a lot more depth in there, and I think we're pulling more from our involvement in music throughout our entire catalogue with this album, more so than some of the previous albums.

OzProg.com: Do you find that sometimes it feels like a bit of a catch 22 when you're in a progressive metal band and something changes in the band, like an infulence or the way you guys write, do you find it's hard to sometimes find a balance on how far you can push a change in a certain direction?

LaBrie: I think we find it hard to maintain a balance. I think when we do write something and we feel we've completed that idea or we feel good about what we've written, then it's recorded. But what happens is the fans sometimes have a real hard time wrapping their heads around that concept, the fact that first of all, people are always going to make comparisons because they want to be able to somehow feel connected to it. So you know, automatically people are going to say "oh there's a METALLICA influence, here they're doing a MUSE thing," and I mean we hear it all. And you know it's funny because even when we're writing, we'll say "oh, I can hear the comparisons already," you know? So really with us, I think as long as we feel comfortable with what we're doing, and as long as we don't feel that we're blatently ripping someone off or there's plagiarism in any sense of the word coming into play, then it's us being true to ourselves and maintaining that integrity but just wanting to experiment. The way I like to express that is, you know, we like to experiment in those styles of music as well, and this is our presentation or this is our way of expressing that particular direction of music. Who gave them the almighty rights to that style of music, whether you want to say it sounds like METALLICA or we sound like MUSE, give me a break, you know? Granted, yeah, it is in that vein, and it is in that direction, but you know, this is our way of writing something that might be construed as such.

Read the entire interview at OzProg.com.