The Dream Sonic Tour is a concept that these three amazingly technical bands dreamt up, and it was to bring a travelling prog-metal music festival to each city on their route. The fact that it was a Tuesday night didn’t deter too many people from showing up in Laval.
For a lot of tours I’ve seen, bands start on time or a few minutes late, but Animals as Leaders took the stage 5 minutes early. I have a lot of respect for the technicality of Tosin Abasi and Javier Reyes, which was on display for the entire fifty-minute set (yes, fifty for an opener!), but if you’re not a music nerd or a musician yourself, a lot of the performance gets lost when most of the action is from Matt Garstka behind the drums. I don’t expect them to change, as their music takes an incredible amount of focus to tap into the techniques that Abasi and Reyes pull off and hammer out each night. Their fully instrumental set definitely had its place on this tour to loosen your mind to the immensity of all the time signature changes that would follow through the rest of the night.
Everyone’s favourite weird prog-head uncle opened up with a quick intro before launching into the title track “Lightworker” from his newest album Lightwork. Much like the lighthouse that is the feature on the album artwork (and $50 tour shirt), Devin Townsend lulled us into a false sense of security on a sea wave before crashing us into the shore with “Kingdom” as a throwback to the 2000 album Physicist. The intro to “Dimensions,” also from Lightwork, encapsulated the weirdness that people expect from Townsend. The track uses a theremin, which Townsend addressed by making fun of how nonsensical of an instrument it is before licking it and then promptly examining it as if it was a novel object.
It’s a delight that Townsend’s iconography is an octopus, as he was mimicking the movements of one throughout the set, as well as while using the theremin. Of course, I wanted coffee after the mandatory Ziltoid the Omniscient performance of “By Your Command”, but the rest of the set was an appreciation of how dedicated Townsend has maintained his voice with being able to consistently switch from cleans to harsh vocals and straight out screams that pepper his performance. It’s amazing that this is an hour-long performance that happens every night for this tour. I did start catching views of people with their children while I was looking around during the Townsend set and appreciate that the parents are taking their hearing protection seriously.
With being a photographer and reviewer for the show, normally we get the first three songs in the pit, but for this show we had the first 15 minutes, and Dream Theater‘s first two songs after the ones from the tape definitely justify the time limit. The set led off with The Alien and Sleeping Giant and our escort crew pulled us out of the pit during Sleeping Giant. I was glad for that escort; otherwise, I would have started counting songs instead of minutes because what is time at a prog-metal concert?
The visuals for Caught in a Web were on point with Shelob dominating the screen. I lost a little bit of time during Losing Time, but Pull Me Under brought me back. After the Count of Tuscany, the pretty full house of Place Bell erupted into Montréal’s typical song of “Olé, Olé” to bring Dream Theater back to the stage for an encore, where they were joined by Tosin Abasi, Devin Townsend, Mike Keneally and Darby Todd. The encore was Act II: Scene 8: The Spirit Carries On, and we watched Todd and Mangini trade turns behind the drumset while Rudess and Keneally complemented each other on their own keyboards. To hear Townsend unleash his screams during the encore was something that brings a uniqueness to this song during this tour. The encore was definitely a highlight of all these musicians’ talents that wrapped the night very nicely.
Review & photos – Ryan Rumpel
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