CD Review: John Petrucci - Suspended Animation - Page 2

The album opens with the ululations of a chugging seven-string in "Jaws of Life". Does it chomp and chew as suggested by the title? Well, um, yeah. But not the sort of chewing that necessitates a bib for fear of upsetting nearby diners. And if there was a bib involved, it would be constructed out of atomic palm mutes, and would give off the reverberations of an intricate scalar phrasing. The song comes to a head with a layered feast of harmonious shredding sidekicked by an accompaniment of intensity. 

Some commentators have labelled this album as simply Dream Theater minus the keyboards of Jordan Rudess and the vocal stylings of James LaBrie, and perhaps this is a fair remark, after all it is Petrucci who conjures a lot of the DT musical roster. But to say this - to spew the words on page, air, or binaries – is to deal out an injustice and miss the excellence of what has been created here. Let us choose to not do it, let it stand alone out there in the culture, fully ready for inspection. 

Second ditty "Glasgow Kiss" seems to have become the big favourite in some quarters; I know it was when I first saw it performed on the G3 Tokyo DVD that the revelation of "purchase that damn album you vile fiend" really smacked me in the jowls. And I did. Don’t go thinking this is a download job - I assure you my hard-earned monies are now jostling in Mr Petrucci’s wallet. Best place for them I say. The licks of "Glasgow Kiss" flip around like some manic etude, catchy and buoyant, an upbeat sequence of tones and semitones. It becomes apparent at this point that the album is not some uniform vehicle of monotony, where each sibling track follows the other, like an octet of twins.  

Nope, each track presents something different; following the rambunctious meandering of "Glasgow Kiss", comes the smooth surf beats of "Tunnel Vision". After that we get the emotive balladry of "Wishful Thinking". The electronic drum intro of the former contrasting nicely with the mid-paced vibrato of the latter. "Wishful Thinking" also offers up perhaps the album highlight in a wonderful, fluent unison section that appears halfway through its runtime. 

"Damage Control" is the other song included on the G3 Tokyo DVD. It opens with a set of percussive power chords, and subsequently muscles along through a multitude of disparate passages, at times evoking the mysticism of Eastern music, at others the grass-nibbling spasticity of bluegrass. It’s the perfect example of that ability to change course mid-song, mid-riff, mid-note that Petrucci imbues in his music; just marvel at that atonal breakdown three quarters in. 

Article Author: Aaron Fleming

Aaron Fleming is a waster and an idler - prone to pomposity - forever enchanted by the filmic and the sonic, words and the aesthetic - given to the most ludicrous appraisal of Culture's finest icons and compositions. He resides in London.

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