SYSTEMATIC CHAOS

"Systematic Chaos", Dream Theater's ninth studio album in 22 years, may be their first ever Top 30 hit in the UK but, for me at least, it is not the band's most enjoyable album to date. The chart entry probably reflects the fact that the band have been steadily picking up faithful fans over the years and, once captured into the fold, few leave because the quality is consistently of a high standard.

So, not their best but still very good.for me, it's not a contender for their best because there are two tracks, Constant Motion and The Dark Eternal Night, on which the band forsake any semblance of melody and give us pure grunge metal. Ok, Dream theater have always been a heavy band, sure, but they have always carried that in style, mixed it with other styles, always given us plenty of melody and invention - but on these two tracks there is nothing and for those of us who like a like sweet something with our mashed brains then it's a grim 15 minutes as the tracks occupy places 3 and 4 on the album.

The remainder of the album is excellent, up to their highest standard, which makes the anomaly seem all the more peculiar, but it is clearly something they intended and, being a stubborn sod who likes to listen to albums the way the artist has conceived them, I am destined to hear the two tracks every time I play the album. The excellence of three-quarters of it does mean that I will play it, but perhaps not as much as my favourite Dream Theater albums: Images & Words, Scenes From a Memory Pt 2 and Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence.