A dream came true for many enthusiastic Bulgarian rock fans at the concert of progressive metal giants Dream Theater. The quintet performed songs from its most recent studio album, Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, at a show in Hall 1 of the National Palace of Culture on Wednesday.

James LaBrie (vocals), John Petrucci (guitar), John Myung (bass), Jordan Rudess (keyboards) and Mike Portnoy (drums) had their audience standing and cheering throughout the more than three hour long show. In addition to their recent tracks, they also performed older pieces encompassing their 17-year-long career, "to make up for the years our fans in Bulgaria have been waiting for us," Portnoy said at a press conference on Tuesday.

The conference was one of the few the musicians had given where all five members of the band were present.

"Of course you have butterflies and it has to do a lot with excitement but once you get consumed by the performance you forget about all that," LaBrie said about stage fever.

Those fans that chose to go see Dream Theater instead of metal monsters Halford and Slayer, who had a concert at Academic Stadium the same evening, were immersed in an unmatched atmosphere of heavy guitar riffs, dazzlingly versatile keyboards, shifting percussion rhythms, LaBrie's dramatic voice and a breathtaking light effect extravaganza.

Rudess' promise that the band would not disappoint its aficionados was thoroughly fulfilled. "Since we are going to play here for the first time, it will be very exciting for us. We will have a great show," Rudess told media earlier in June.

The band's visit to Sofia was part of the European branch of their World Tourbulence 2002 tour, promoting Dream Theater's latest release. The tour started on June 14 in Finland.

The double-CD Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, Dream Theater's sixth studio album, pinned at number 46 on Billboard's Album Top 200 as soon as it came out in January.

Russell Hall of CDNOW has called the epic "a roughly equal mix of sublime balladry and apocalyptic assaults". David Browne of Entertainment Weekly has written in his review of the album that the title track is a "true prog nirvana".

The 42-minute title track of the album, even though not played in its entirety, was the most impressive piece of Dream Theater's set in Sofia.

In an interview with Ytsejam.com earlier this year, Portnoy said "the lyrical concept of the entire title piece is six different characters.

"It's almost like a tour through a mental asylum or a psychiatric ward. Basically you're getting into the minds of six different people who come from six different lives."

Dream Theater are known for their lengthy conceptual compositions and their latest album did not stray off that main road.

"We are not a song-oriented band, but an album-oriented band," Portnoy said at the news conference on Tuesday. He said that they would not spend money on promoting a single song with a video on MTV, because "this would be an insult to both ourselves and the fans, since not much could be expressed in one song," he said.