Progressive metal band Dream Theater brings heavy theatricality to the Benedum Center

A metal band may seem like an odd fit in a setting like Downtown Pittsburgh’s Benedum Center, typically home to musicals and ballets. But Dream Theater — shaped and honed by four decades of recording and performing — provided plenty of theatricality to match the stage at Thursday night’s concert.

Progressive metal may not be a genre that gets a lot of airplay. With sprawling songs, odd time signatures and darker themes, bands of Dream Theater’s ilk aren’t necessarily radio-friendly. Nonetheless, the outfit has recorded more than a dozen studio albums and sold more than 12 million records worldwide. Their latest album, “Parasomnia,” was released in February and comprised the first half of Thursday night’s set in its entirety.

And for a band named Dream Theater, “Parasomnia” feels an awful lot like a nightmare — in a good way.

In addition to new music and the band’s 40-year anniversary, fans had even more reason to celebrate this show. This was the first time that Dream Theater’s returned to the Southwestern Pennsylvania region since the return of original drummer Mike Portnoy, who departed the band in 2010 and rejoined in 2023.

The start of “Parasomnia” set the stage with the sounds of an individual coming home, turning out the lights and settling into a bed. The project is a concept album about, well, parasomnias — a range of sleep disorders that are highlighted throughout each song, including night terrors, sleep paralysis and sleepwalking. Each song was made more immersive by chilling, macabre images onscreen behind the band.

Flowing through the eight tracks of the album, each member of Dream Theater worked together to project pure energy into the atmosphere inside the Benedum. Songs ranged from brief minute-and-a-half-long interludes to the monster 19-minute finale, “The Shadow Man Incident.”

Many of the songs, including early standout “Night Terror,” had keyboardist Jordan Rudess buttressing the instrumentation with synths out of a 1980s horror movie, made even more impactful by Portnoy’s thunderous drumming. Much like the confusion of experiencing a night terror, the song sometimes felt cacophonous, but the live performance was evocative.

Vocalist James LeBrie would later tell the crowd that he was sick but would “give you everything I’ve got tonight.” He didn’t hold back, his vocals ranging from haunting and operatic to a gentler whisper during the start of crowd favorite “Bend the Clock.”

“Dead Asleep” — the story of a man who murders his wife while sleepwalking — was the most effective song of the album. It felt like a twisted lullaby, with plinking keys and a chugging guitar riff.

“The Shadow Man Incident” kept shifting through time signatures and moods, sometimes creepy and sometimes chaotic. The first set ended with a reminder to “wake up” and the ring of an alarm clock.

“Enter Sandman” has nothing on hearing “Parasomnia” live when it comes to metal songs to keep you up at night.

The second half was an eclectic mix of tunes from throughout the band’s discography. “Panic Attack” featured Portnoy’s nimble-but-forceful drums, squeaky and frantic guitar from John Petrucci and an often changing tempo that mimicked the feeling of anxiety.

“Peruvian Skies” felt like a departure, with spacey keys and a totally different atmosphere. It also pulled in excerpts of Pink Floyrd’s “Wish You Were Here” and Metallica’s “Wherever I May Roam,” both slotting in perfectly. Rudess even came out from his keyboard setup to rock a keytar with the rest of the band.

If one song from Thursday night will be sneaking its way onto my playlists, it’ll be the regular set closer “Take the Time” from the band’s 1992 album “Images and Words.” It still contained the face-melting guitar solos, intricate bass and drums, and frequent change-ups of the rest of the set, but it felt more accessible, even adding in a dsah of funk. The audience audibly sang along with the refrain at the end before the stage went dark once more.

The encore was entirely comprised of a 23-minute-long song called “A Change of Seasons” in several movements. And it was truly epic. Starting with the scene from 1989 film “Dead Poet’s Society” where Robin Williams teaches a group of students about the concept of “carpe diem,” the song is a hard rock existential crisis that had everyone on their feet.

Expert musicianship, frantic lighting and jets of fog rising into the air turned Dream Theater’s Pittsburgh show about nightmares into a dream concert after all.