DISTANCE OVER TIME

After the Octavarium album, I have lost a bit of my enthusiasm towards the band's music. I was not expecting something amazing with this new album. I saw the reviews of the album before it was out. Some said the band was back with some of their best music of the past. When I give a spin to the album at first was a bit disappointed. But if I do this review, it's because, after more listening, the music has grown a little on me enough to justify a review. From the first 2 songs, we are in familiar territory with the band's style over the last 20 years. "Fall into the Light" brings some trash metal Metallica style, but the songs have many rhythms change displaying some impressive playing from every player and some cool melodic parts. There are some vocals effects on James voice in the song "Room 137" and "S2N", the latter show some Rush inspired parts and a more inspired Mangini on drums. "At Wit's End" has a heavy first part, a lighter and melodic second part, a song that starts to fade away at the 7 minutes mark. "Out of Reach" is what I don't like in Dream Theater, another boring ballad like you have in every album. In the song"Pale Blue Dot" we have some cool keys and drums parts and that typical John Petrucci heroic on guitar. The bonus track is a surprise with some groovy more standard rock style kind of music that made me think of Deep Purple. So I think this album is a natural evolution of the band's music in the last two decades. After so many years of great music, we could expect that the band is starting to run out of ideas, but a good band that they are they can't release a bad album. 3.4 stars