How to follow up a huge, bloated, technical monster of an album like A View From the Top of the World? Especially with added fan expectations thanks to the return of Mike Portnoy to the drumming stool, a long thirteen years after his acrimonious departure? Well, if you're Dream Theater it's by doubling down, releasing your longest album since 2011 (not counting The Astonishing, which really, no-one should be doing anyway) and by neither outdoing the technical prowess shown on A View From the Top of the World nor writing the sort of shorter, better songs that made the stripped-back 2019 Distance Over Time such a pleasant surprise. On initial listens there's very little that catches the attention about Parasomnia, Dream Theater's sixteenth full-length, even though it is one of their darker and gloomier in a while. It's something of a concept album with the songs generally revolving around sleep and mild sleep-related spookiness yet this rarely feels impactful - if they were about alcoholism or stem cell research or whatever, little else would change beyond this gloomier atmosphere.

Despite that theme (which yes, we can probably blame/credit Portnoy for!) the songs seem forgettable enough to suspect that Dream Theater are on autopilot, not helped by a downright boring start with the chuggy instrumental In The Arms of Morpheus that feels like an intro piece leading to absolutely nothing, the intro to the following Night Terror having an As I Am but slower and duller vibe with those groovy riffs, not to mention its own minute and a half long intro! Not for the first time you find yourself wishing that the band, as good as they undeniably are at playing their instruments, spent a little longer working on better songs. There are plenty of solid moments scattered through the album, generally based around the instrumental interplay which is as usual a real strength of the band, yet they rarely seem to add up to make solid songs overall. This is particularly an issue given that how long and drawn out songs here are - the jazzy interlude and subsequent proggy meander in the eight-minute-plus A Broken Man isn't quite enough to stop the rest of the track seeming dull, for example. The following Dead Asleep is over eleven minutes and is more memorable thanks to a better chorus and some better instrumental hooks, yet it still feels like a seven minute song dragged out at best, even before the spooky piano and sound effects tacked on at the end.

None of this is really helped by the sense that Portnoy's return is something of an anticlimax, either. Say what you like about the albums released since his departure themselves, few would deny that Mike Mangini is an extremely skilled drummer who more than kept up with the rest of the band in terms of virtuosity, and there are only a few standout moments here where the increased personality of Portnoy makes an impact other than the aforementioned gloomier vibe. Sadly none of these are in the production, as solid if sterile as ever thanks to guitarist John Petrucci, but rather in the lyrics to the Metallica-fied Midnight Messiah, full of easter egg references to past Dream Theater songs ranging from the fun to the downright clunky ("like an uncanny strange déjà vu" and "like a sword piercing this dying soul" ...really, Mike?).

And that this ends up being one of the more standout pieces here thanks to the propulsive energy and catchy chorus, James LaBrie managing to sound better than fine for once, doesn't really say much for the album, either! The band seem determined to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory; case in point, one of the relatively best actual songs here being ballad Bend the Clock, where LaBrie sounds a little processed but more than carries things through the first five or so minutes... Before instead of just ending the song, the band decide to throw in a complete shift with a Petrucci solo that feels like a tacked-on attempt at Pink Floyd-esque atmospherics that goes on and for the rest of the song, fading out eventually with the man still playing! It's as though Dream Theater are unable to let moments work for themselves, instead piling on the density and instrumental drama.

The worst example of this is album closer The Shadow Man Incident, all nineteen minutes and thirty-two seconds of it. It doesn't feel like a long song as the band have made plenty of excellent examples of in the past, so much as a series of loosely connected instrumental vignettes, starting with a pounding, almost modern Candlemass-esque doom stomp before shifting around the three minute mark to a more traditionally Dream Theatery prog metal groove. The first vocals come in just before the five minute mark, drenched in effects in a way that is goofy rather than spooky, and although the ensuing thrashier gallop feels more impactful, it still has the air of the band reanimating older musical pieces rather than something fresh and new, meaning that you seize onto moments like the honky-tonk piano around the thirteen minute mark as better than it is. Hell, even the theme feels misplaced, the slenderman memetrain of ten plus years ago making an unexpected comeback!

Given how undeniably solid previous epic-length pieces from the band have been, it overall can't help but feel adequate but disappointing, much like the album overall - if your expectations rose because of Portnoy's return, then you really should lower them before listening. A less kind reviewer would accuse the band's inspiration tanks of running very dry indeed, which makes sense here given the added effects and samples of ticking clocks, and so on. The ending sample of an alarm and a voice saying wake up! even gives rise to dread suspicions that the band are going to make an attempt at a part three of their Metropolis saga, which will have to be at least half as good as their classic Scenes from a Memory if it's going to be any sort of success! We all know that Dream Theater haven't been reaching their true potential for a while - Parasomnia is a disappointing enough album that it's not unfair to ask if they ever will again.