Images and Words is the second studio album by American progressive metal band Dream Theater, released on July 7, 1992, through Atco Records.

[5] The lead single, "Pull Me Under", gained the band considerable commercial success with its airplay on MTV and radio, garnering them a top 10 hit on Billboard's Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.

[6] The song "Take the Time" includes samples from Kurtis Blow's "Christmas Rappin'" ("Hold it now"), Frank Zappa's "Dancin' Fool" ("Wait a minute"), and Public Enemy's "Power to the People", ("Come on").

The song also features a quote from Giuseppe Tornatore's movie Cinema Paradiso: "Ora che ho perso la vista, ci vedo di più" ("Now that I have lost my sight, I see more"), sung and paraphrased by LaBrie shortly before in the song ("I can see much clearer now, I'm blind").

Images and Words was played in its entirety on several occasions during the European leg of the 2007 "Chaos in Motion" tour, in celebration of its 15th anniversary.

In 2017, Dream Theater celebrated the 25th anniversary of the album on the "Images, Words & Beyond" tour in Europe, which started on January 30 at the Auditorium Parco Della Musica in Rome, Italy.

The German magazine Rock Hard elected Images and Words Album of the Month and lauded Dream Theater, using "the old [1970s] term 'supergroup'"; according to the reviewer, they set "standards and still perfect them, although they hardly appear to do so" and, even considering the many influences in their music, the "versatility, the linking of different grooves and melody elements within each songs" shows how Dream Theater are "style-transcending like no other band.

[13] Canadian journalist Martin Popoff in his Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal praised the band's musicianship and "the tricky arrangements", but was not thrilled by the album, which he found "a bit too self-aware and calculated to be in the true spirit of progressive rock.