Dream Theater — Metropolis Part 2: Scenes From A Memory
The Art Corner was a series of articles by graphic artist Mattias Norén, who was part of the DPRP team and designed the layout we had at the time. In this series, Mattias reviewed the artwork of albums. The series started in January 1999 and ran for about 18 months.
The original introduction of the series is included below and will tell you what it was all about. This category no longer runs, so information about submitting an album for review has been removed, but we're keeping the archived articles as a separate series in the Features category.
Check out Mattias Norén's company website: ProgArt!
Dear visitor of The Art Corner!
Some people say that it's just the inside that counts, but I'm actually one of those men that cares much about the outside as well! :-)
The Art Corner only concentrates on the outside. What I think about the inside, the music, I'll keep for myself in this case.
Each album has been given 1 to 5 points in seven different categories.
- Design / Composition: Is the idea and layout good?
- Technical skill: Is the artist good at what he is doing?
- Connection to the music: Is the artwork inspired by the music, album title and the lyrics? Does it feel good to look at the cover at the same time you listening to the music?
- Logotype: How good is the design of the logotype?
- Typography: How good is the typography? (cover and backcover)
- Booklet: How good is the typography, artwork, layout and paper quality?
- Disc: How good is the typography, artwork, layout on the disc?
Mattias Norén
Dream Theater — Metropolis Part 2: Scenes From A Memory (EastWest - 62448-2, October 1999)
Design
Artwork and layout by
Scores
| category | score |
|---|---|
| Design and composition | |
| Technical skill | |
| Connection to the music | |
| Logotype | |
| Typography | |
| Booklet | |
| Disc |
Score: 3.4
Comments
In the previous Art Corner edition, we had Queensrÿche's Q2K, and in this one we have Dream Theater. So you can see this as the fight between the two Prog Metal titans, I guess!
Both of them have very nice covers. I would say that this is Dream Theater's best cover so far, but they both have failed to create interesting booklets. The booklet for Scenes From A memory is simple, black-and-white without any images. It works all right, but for such an fascinating concept album, it would have been nice with some images taken from the story.
There is one image on the back of the booklet, but I don't think it works very well there. It's too different from the cover. The same goes for the back of the case with the track listing.
The print on the disc is simple but very nice.
A small victory for Dream Theater in this Prog Metal artwork fight. And I must say that they win the musical fight as well.
