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1DT is one of the most polarizing bands in Prog Rock. They're either the best musicians performing today, writing some of the best music out there, or they ramble through overly technical, endless solos. Or they may be both. That's left to your choice.
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3* {{Anvilicious}}: They have quite a few songs based on mental disorders, and they're not remotely subtle about depicting how debilitating said disorders can be, nor how unjust it is that people who suffer from them are stigmatised in society. "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" may be the best example, though "The Enemy Inside" also deserves mention for bringing attention to the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder among war veterans (as well as the band's close work with a charity for said veterans).
4* BrokenBase:
5** Generally in the form of Older Stuff vs. Newer Stuff. The dividing point is usually with ''Scenes from a Memory''.
6** Kevin Moore. Depending on who you ask, he was either a valuable but nonessential part of the band whose loss was made up for, or he was their secret weapon and someone whose loss made the band lose some of its charm.
7** Mike Portnoy vs. Mike Mangini. Portnoy is widely considered one of the greatest metal drummers of all time, so obviously his departure and replacement was seen as the end of an era, with many fans thinking that no one could possibly replace him and declaring everything with Mangini on it FanonDiscontinuity. That said, many fans do think that Mangini is talented enough to be a suitable replacement, or even that he's the superior drummer of the two. Others yet think that Mangini is more skilled on a technical level, but lacks Portnoy's energy and stage presence. Even among Mangini's detractors, there are some who think that he's improving with each new album, while others still think that he's nowhere near Portnoy's level and will likely never catch up. Because of this, asking "Portnoy or Mangini?" is a great way to spark a heated debate.
8** James [=LaBrie=]'s voice is a point of contention. Of course, plenty of fans love his singing and consider him a great vocalist, but others believe that he is past his prime and that his vocals have gotten weaker with age, with a portion of the fanbase claiming that he's dragging the rest of the band down, should just retire already and either let the band become fully instrumental or hire a new vocalist. [=LaBrie=]'s supporters and detractors frequently end up arguing over this.
9* CompleteMonster: In "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-ZSLUdceX8 The Dark Eternal Night]]", [[EldritchAbomination Nyarlathotep]] is as twisted as ever. Descending from the stars, the Outer God subjects worlds to madness and death, annihilating entire planets and leaving nothing but ruin and death in his wake, glorying over the destruction he creates.
10* EndingFatigue: "Six Degrees"'s final chord fades out over the course of two minutes, and "Finally Free"'s outro riff repeats twelve times before the song ends (although it is overlaid by a rather climactic drum solo)... leading into a minute-and-a-half long epilogue that cuts to lingering static. Subverted by "Octavarium", which sounds like it's about to end on the last chord of "Intervals", but transitions into "Razor's Edge", which is epic enough to defy this trope.
11* EpicRiff: For a band often slagged for their songwriting, they have quite a few of these on a wide variety of instruments. From ''Awake'', the main riffs from "Erotomania" and "The Mirror" are good examples, as is the drum intro to "6:00".
12* FandomEnragingMisconception: Spelling the band’s name as “Dream Theatre” is a quick way to annoy the fandom.
13* FanonDiscontinuity: Depending on who you ask, the responses you'll get for favorite and least favorite albums tends to be almost random. Every single album will be at the top or bottom of someone's list, and most fans ignore a few albums. Some examples:
14** ''When Dream and Day Unite'', due to its fairly jarring EarlyInstallmentWeirdness. As in "there was no DT before James [=LaBrie=]".
15** ''Falling into Infinity'', due to it being a NewSoundAlbum towards radio-friendliness. Sometimes ''A Change of Seasons'' gets hit as well, getting a "there was no DT with Derek Sherinian".
16*** "There was no DT with [[ExecutiveMeddling Desmond Child and Kevin Shirley]] [[WhatCouldHaveBeen interfering with everything]]."
17** Everything post-''Scenes...'' (and sometimes ''Scenes'' itself) is subjected to this, as "there's no DT with Jordan Rudess".
18** Everything post-''Black Clouds...'' as "there's no DT without Mike Portnoy".
19* MemeticBadass: John Petrucci, likely due in large part to the "Psycho Exercises" videos. Most videos on Website/YouTube featuring Petrucci either performing or just talking about his rig, music, etc. have a number of comments referencing absolute world-dominating awesomeness, usually in ways obviously influenced by Website/ChuckNorrisFacts.
20* MemeticMutation:
21** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evTTHS9hwvU John Petrucci's Psycho Exercises]]. You suck if you can't play five million notes a second like he can.
22** Expect to see someone comment "Lyrics by John Myung" on every instrumental track of the band. [[TheQuietOne The guy is just that loquacious.]] Also expect to see many jokes in the comments of videos where John actually does speak.
23** Instrumental tracks often also have comments claiming it to be [=LaBrie=]'s best performance yet.
24** Following the release of the video for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gylxuO6dKOw Untethered Angel]], which shows the band in studio, most of the jokes in the comments reference the height of drummer Mike Mangini's cymbals.
25* MoralEventHorizon: Edward in ''Metropolis, Pt. 2'' crosses it when he [[spoiler: kills Victoria and Julian.]]
26* {{Narm}}: While ''Black Clouds & Silver Linings'' may be amazing on a musical level, it also features what is often considered to be some of the band's worst lyrics, turning beautiful songs into something laughable.
27** "A Nightmare to Remember", which has a section where Portnoy sounds like he's attempting HarshVocals to describe how no one got seriously hurt in the car crash, followed by a pathetic-sounding "roar".
28---> It's a miracle he lived, it's a blessing no one died\
29By the grace of God above, everyone survived...\
30'''''HRAAAAARRRRGH!!!'''''
31** The lyrics on "The Count of Tuscany" are some of the most ridiculous in the band's history. It describes Petrucci visiting a completely normal vineyard in Italy... and desperately tries to make it sound like the scariest thing in the world. The pre-chorus is often memed due to being particularly hilarious.
32---> Let me introduce...\
33'''MY BROTHER!!!'''\
34A bearded gentleman...\
35'''''HISTORIAN!!!'''''\
36Sucking on his pipe...\
37Distinguished accent...\
38Making me uptight...\
39'''''NO ACCIDENT!!!'''''
40* NarmCharm: While Dream Theater is undeniably a cheesy band, some think that's part of the band's appeal. Even though the lyrics aren't always the best, the band's sheer musical talent means that fans are more than willing to accept them anyway.
41** "The Count of Tuscany" might be hands down the silliest song they've ever written lyrically, as it's about a man being scared by some Italian dude taking him to their house and telling scary stories and being unsettled at slight differences in their lifestyles. And yet... musically it's just so badass, grand, majestic, with an absolutely beautiful synth section that can be a TearJerker if you're in the right mood. And even the inherent silliness of the lyrics aside, the final words from the titular Count can be a TearJerker, especially the way James delivers the words "Go and tell the world my story! Tell them about my brother, tell them about me, the count of Tuscany!". It's undeniably silly and yet it ''still'' tugs at your heartstrings.
42* NeverLiveItDown: Despite being a complete coincidence, the band is never going to be able to live down the fact that their live album ''Live Scenes from New York'' originally had a cover featuring a picture of a burning New York City, with the World Trade Center in the middle of it. If this wasn't bad enough, the album was actually released on the very same day the 9/11 attack occurred.
43* NightmareFuel: They have [[NightmareFuel/DreamTheater their own page]].
44* ReplacementScrappy: Some fans had this attitude after Mike Portnoy was replaced by Mike Mangini. While Mangini is a spectacular drummer on the post-Portnoy albums, he doesn't garner the same "excitement" Portnoy was known for.
45** A smaller portion of fans felt the same way when Kevin Moore was replaced with Jordan Rudess.
46* SequelDisplacement: ''Images And Words'', which even had the general public not knowing that the band had one album prior. As shown in BrokenBase above, a certain portion of fans consider it to be their debut album rather than ''When Dream And Day Unite'', despite the band still playing material from the album over the years.
47* SignatureSong: "Pull Me Under" is their most well-known song, being the titular "Greatest Hit" of ''[[GreatestHitsAlbum Greatest Hit (...And 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs)]]''.
48* SuspiciouslySimilarSong: This could be excused by the multitude of influences the members share, but a lot of the band's catalogue has excerpts which sound a lot like other bands' songs, to the point were [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXpk4FSCrBM someone posted videos]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnUh8jlu6oI showcasing their similarities between songs]]. Here are a few examples:
49** "Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence" starts with a melody that sounds eerily similar to the way Music/{{Kansas}} began the outro to their song, "The Wall", and the "Solitary Shell" movement has more in line with Music/PeterGabriel's "Solsbury Hill" than just its title.
50** A recurring riff in "The Enemy Inside" has the exact same guitar line as the main riff in Music/{{Megadeth}}'s "Sudden Death".
51** "Panic Attack" has a recurring riff that sounds very similar to Ridley's {{Leitmotif}} from the ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' series.
52** "Never Enough" has a similar rhythm, structure and sound to "[[{{Music/Muse}} Stockholm Syndrome]]".
53* SugarWiki/SweetDreamsFuel:
54** "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFOr-B-zuEg Eve]]" is one of Dream Theater's more obscure tracks, but it's also a beautiful, soothing instrumental.
55** The [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNZiqRf4gSs hidden track]] at the end of "Illumination Theory". No, really. A hidden track being ''sweet dreams fuel'', whereas others are happy to [[NightmareFuel fit on the other end of the spectrum]].
56* TearJerker: [[TearJerker/DreamTheater Have their own page]], and they've really, ''really'' earned it.
57* ToughActToFollow: Pretty much anything post-''Images and Words'' (and sometimes ''Awake'') is subjected to this, with the exception of ''Scenes...''.
58** ''Falling Into Infinity'' suffered from this ''hard'' due to following up the critically acclaimed ''Awake''. James [=LaBrie=] suffering from a vocal cord injury also didn't help matters. But what really hurt this album was ExecutiveMeddling up the wazoo, such as the band having to write shorter, "radio-friendly" songs, producer Kevin Shirley making a lot of changes (such taking the middle section out of "Burning My Soul" and turning it into what would become "Hell's Kitchen"), and the band being forced to work with an outside songwriter, Desmond Child. The album was a critical and commercial failure upon release, although in the recent years, fans and critics alike have been much [[VindicatedByHistory kinder to the album]].
59** A release of demos of the album's songs has been quite warmly received, with many fans saying they preferred these versions to the overproduced album versions.
60** ''Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence'' is a very underrated album, mainly because it was unfortunate enough to come after ''Scenes From a Memory'', which is widely considered their best album.
61** ''The Astonishing'' for some, while critics are hailing it as a great album, many fans see it as average at best, feel it is heavily similar to Music/{{Rush|Band}}'s ''2112'' album, and that its 2 hour length and overabundance of [[PowerBallad power ballads]] really bring the album down.
62** Mike Portnoy is considered as one of the best metal drummers of all time, so when he left the band, his replacement, Mike Mangini, had a lot to live up to, causing a BrokenBase over how suitable he is as a replacement.
63* VindicatedByHistory:
64** ''Falling Into Infinity'' was a failure after it was released. Nowadays, a lot of people call it an underrated gem in their discography. A 2007 release of the demos from the album got quite a large amount of acclaim, with many fans and critics feeling they represent the way the album should have sounded in the first place. (The addition of well-loved tracks such as "Raise the Knife" helped, too).
65** From a critical standpoint, ''Awake'' was rather mixed in its release. Years later, critics have looked back on the album more favorably, enough to include it in various "best of the 90s" lists.
66* WinBackTheCrowd:
67** Mileage may vary, but there's no doubt that the self titled brought a lot of fans back following the mixed bag release of ''A Dramatic Turn of Events'', often even called heavier than ''Train of Thought'' and some (even Mike Portnoy) feel the album is similar to ''Images and Words''.
68** ''Distance Over Time'' has ''slightly'' become this for fans, especially for those snubbed by ''The Astonishing'' and its length and abundance of power ballads. It's not a RockOpera, is less than half the length, and has a few classic Dream Theater EpicRocking songs, with most tracks being over six minutes in length.

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