According to The Dream Theater Official French Fanclub, Dream Theater played a very special show at Razmatazz in Barcelona, Spain, at February 19th. Performing the entire Metallica "Master Of Puppets" album, all eight songs, while donning Metallica T-shirts and sporting an improvised Dream Theater-logo'd Master of Puppets backdrop. Billed on Dream Theater's official website as a "Very special show", the gig featured no opening act and was the second of a two-night stint at the venue.

Here is a gig report from the show by Sebastien Demay

Dream Theater was playing two nights in Barcelona at the end of their first European leg. The second night was bound to be special, in the way that the setlist would have to be completely different from the first night, and that there would be no opening act, but two sets with an intermission.

The first set was a bunch of DT classics and epics - 1h40 of great "for fans" tracks. The sound and the mood in this venue was tremedous. But the best was yet to come. After the 20-minute intermission, the light was shut down, and we knew we were going to have a surprise. But even the responsible people for the official fan-clubs did not really knowwhat to expect , except the fact that DT had rehearsed "Master Of Puppets" and "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" during previous soundchecks.

When the first intro - a tape of the beginning of "Battery" - went out in through the PA's, it freaked the audience out. I thought to myself "then they are going to play the entire album...". But I couldn't believe it yet. It's only when the light came again and when I saw that the band members were all wearing a Metallica tshirt (except the bass player and the singer), and when I saw the backdrop (a funny modified MoP cover), that I was convinced that they were about to play all of MoP.

Metallica is with no doubt the biggest "metal" influence of DT. You can tell that from their music. Live, they had already played "Damage, Inc." with the singer of Napalm Death in London (01/31/95, then played many times on their Waking Up The World '95 tour). They had included on the '98 tour a bit of "Enter Sandman" in their track "Peruvian Skies" (whose final riff is an incredible Metallica-esque riff). Now they were about to pay a tribute to their fav' Metallica album, that they had taken with them in the studio for their "inspiration corner" of their last album. Amazing.

The crowd, as soon they recognized the acoustic guitars from "Battery", went wild. The Spanish audience was not huge (about 2000 people - one of the smallest audience of the tour, but the venue was too small and completely packed), but they were LOUD ! They knew the lyrics by heart and the two first songs were kicking serious ass. Then everybody could have some rest on "The Thing That Should Not Be" and "Welcome Home", but it was pretty intense and the chorus were always sung by the crowd.

DT is known to be at the top of the technical skills in metal, and compared to their stuff, Metallica's songs are somehow easy. It was so accurate, even if MoP is my fav' Metallica album, I was really impressed by the way they played it. Of course nothing can top the original album versions, but they really competed Metallica with the way they played the songs live. And I'm a Metallica fan myself.

Of course, James LaBrie is more a lyrical singer than Hetfield, so it was not as powerful as Hetfield, but as James is more melodic, it gave to the songs a new dimension, vocally speaking. They fact that there was a keyboard may not please the die-hard Metallica fans, but the keyboard was not taken a lot of room. It was mainly to play bits of original Hammet's solos, and it was very interesting. The original tempo seemed to have been raised up a bit, and Mike Portnoy was really having a fuckin' great time behind his kit - what a tremendous energy ! John Petrucci was maybe the most impressive with the way he dealt with both rythm and solo sections. Covering Hammet's solos seemed so easy for him. Disgusting. Even John Myung managed to re-create very well the bass sound of Cliff Burton at the beginning of "Damage, Inc." and all throughout "Orion".

I wouldn't have dared thinking they would try to cover all this album one day, and even if I had knew before, I wouldn't have imagined that the result would be so exciting. It was a perfect mix of the aggressive Metallica playing and their more progressive skills (keyboard playing, more melodic singing). Well done guys !!!