Speakers
Toni-Matti Karjalainen
Dr. Toni-Matti Karjalainen is Professor of Arts Management in Sibelius Academy at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland. He is also Adjunct Professor (Docent) of Music Management and Culture Export at Aalto University in Espoo, Finland, where he also previously worked as Academy Research Fellow and Research Director. Karjalainen holds a Doctor of Arts degree in Art and Design, and Master of Science in Economics. He has been a visiting lecturer and researcher in various countries and produced over one hundred academic publications in different outlets, ranging from design and brand management to popular music. The most recent one is the book Made in Finland: Studies in Popular Music (Routledge, 2020) edited with Kimi Kärki. Karjalainen created and organized the Modern Heavy Metal Conference, an international research event, in Finland 2015-2020, acted as Secretary of International Society for Metal Music Studies in 2015-2019 and is actively involved in the music industry. Homepage: www.tonimattikarjalainen.info.
Theater of Dreams:
Visual narrating in progressive metal
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Toni-Matti Karjalainen
“If you look at the best progressive albums of all time, whether they are made by Pink Floyd or Yes or Genesis or Rush, they all have that very detailed look […] they are the type of album covers that you want to look at, trying to take apart and analyze […] and I think we’ve always wanted to get that in the Dream Theater covers as well.”[1]
In the proposed presentation, I will go through the visual history of Dream Theater album covers and related visual imagery, analyzing them in connection to the musical and lyrical contents, and the historical trajectory of the band. The analysis shows how visual representations construct entities that express the album’s concept or stories of single songs. They also form a perennial Dream Theater narrative with meanings independent of individual songs and albums, with lots of interesting details. For example, the futuristic cover of their 2019 album Distance over Time bares explicit resemblance of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that was also the lyrical theme in their 1992 Breakthrough song “Pull Me Under”. Moreover, such ‘paradigmatic coherence’[2] of visual narration is also clearly seen in terms of sustaining the claimed prog metal identity of Dream Theater, explicitly connecting them to the visual history of prog rock. The band has for instance collaborated with Huge Syme, also known for his visual work for the prog rock giant Rush.
Through the case of Dream Theater and other prog metal examples, I explore how visual narrating is in a key representative role in delivering the concept of ‘progression’, or ‘big ideas and grand ambition’[3]. Within this extremely shattered, open-ended and vast genre, there yet appear multiple different styles and paradigms but, as a common nominator, the prog identity entails intentional use of visual narratives as a key ingredient in creating and sustaining larger musical concepts.
[1] The quote is from my interview (2010) with Mike Portnoy, the former drummer and establishing member of the prog metal pioneers Dream Theater.
[2] Referring to the concept of semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure.
[3] As Jeff Wagner describes progressive metal in his thorough book Mean Deviation (2010).
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Keywords: Progressive metal, visual narratives, Dream Theater, album covers, visual art