SYSTEMATIC CHAOS

In The Presence Of Enemies Pt 1, sounded like a robot when I first heard it. I thought they were going to continue with the continuation theme, but they didn't. Totally ruined my mood for the song. Everything except the short break halfway through the song, is robotic, heartless, emotionless junk. The unisons are something out of a Steve Vai record. No emotion. (7/10)

Forsaken isn't any better, at least it has some emotion. Too bad it's not that good of a song. Just a trashing of crap. (6/10)

Constant Motion, now that's more like it! The gears start to be put in motion and the ball starts rolling! This song is the Dream Theater I remember! Not all metal or all soft wannabe prog, but a perfect combination of both. The middle section instrumental still boggles my mind to this day, total genius. This is a Dream Theater song. (9/10)

The Dark Eternal Night, other than some less than enthiusiastic ragtime solos from Rudess, this song blows. (2/10)

Repentance, here's a song. My absolute favorite out of all the Alcholics Anonymous songs. Taking a few cues from Opeth here, this song is a real treat. The singing is really great here and its a real pleasure to listen to this song. I love it! (9/10)

Prophets Of War...It sucks for those 50 Dream Theater fans who got a chance to sing on this song, BECAUSE IT'S AWFUL. It sounds like another Muse rip off. Ultimately horrible, lyrically stupid. James Labrie needs to stop writing songs. (0/10)

The Ministry Of Lost Souls, replace Souls with Songs and you basically have it. It's an original sounding piece, but it ultimately goes absolutely nowhere. There's only a short instrumental, after ten minutes of the same song, drilling into your mind like an annoyingr rap song. It's boring. (5/10)

In The Presence Of Enemies PT 2, wow. At least this one doesn't stab my ears like the first one. It's after listening to this that I realise this: John Petrucci's solos are flavorless and bland. There is nothing at all special about his solos anymore. He has no more creativity, it's gone. He sounds like Steve Vai now. Overall, better than the firts part, with a bit more emotion, mainly because of James Labrie's intense vocalizing. (7/10)

The star of this album in my opinion, is James Labrie. Vocally, this is his best album. He's at his peak right now, I just wish some of the songs he was singing to were actually good. The loser here is repetitive writing and overall lack of feeling. Three stars, only because Labrie's singing is really good.

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