SYSTEMATIC CHAOS

I hate to give Dream Theater a 1, but it has to be done. If you have listened to all of their stuff like I have this reaches none of their previous standards. This album was released to please the fans and give them what they want, and I think this mentality happened with Dream Theater when they signed with Roadrunner Records, a label that endorses Slipknot...Anyways all the songs on here sound manufactured and uninspired and without much second thought compared to a masterpiece like Scenes From a Memory Metropolis Part 2. Now let's think about this, when Scenes From a Memory Metropolis Part 2 came out it was a do or die for Dream Theater, if that album failed, they as a band failed and Dream Theater would've probably been over. But they had this in mind so they all took the best of their musical ability to create a masterpiece. As I listened to this album I found musical passages of little interest. In The Presence of Enemies Pt. 1 sounds what people would want a Dream Theater song to be and it is; it did its job and there's nothing really special about it. Forsaken is actually decent, but isn't really that progressive, but leans more to the mainstream as a ballad. Constant Motion and The Dark Eternal sound tight!!! but that's exactly what they want to do.. Gather fans with that tough metal sound that doesn't really belong on this progressive website. Not to mention Dream Theater doesn't even do thrash metal that well especially with Labrie's unfitting vocals which he has managed to somewhat improve on. Repentance sadly shows that DT has run out of gas and had to take material from albums past Train of Thought, this song is more solid compared to other ones, but the fact that they had to use material from a past album is kind of daunting on where Dream Theater is headed. Prophets of War almost wants to sound like Muse with Labrie's eccentric input, your going to have to give this one a listen for yourself. The best song on this album is The Ministry of Lost Souls, it's original and actually sounds like a bit of effort was put into it. Only if the rest of the album wasn't so focused on being heavy and held in quality equivalence to this song. Pt. 2 to the beginning is the ending and tolls off the iron bells of what Dream Theater is supposed to sound like with Labrie singing about A dark master that shows how heavy the band is...hah... If your a metalhead you may like the technical aspect of it as everything from DT is TEChnical...if your into prog which is the purpose of this site, by all means STAY AWAY and give Awake or SFAMemory a listen first. i find this album Degressive.