JAMES LABRIE'S MULLMUZZLER 2

Two years after the release of the first album, and Dream Theater vocalist James LaBrie is back with his Mullmuzzler project for round two! And much like their first outing, this is really nothing more than a watered down version of LaBrie's main band. There's a few memorable songs, but there really isn't a lot here to get overly excited about.

The musicianship is pretty good, although as before, there isn't enough evidence that makes this band feel like a cohesive unit. There's some nice guitar riffing and some interesting keyboard lines, but it's hard to really envision these guys getting together in a room and rocking out to these tracks with nothing more than slightly perturbed looks on their faces.

It's not all gloom and doom though, as some of the songs are actually really good, such as 'Confronting the Devil', 'Stranger', 'Save Me' and 'Tell Me'. Sadly, there's a lot of rather forgettable stuff here too! Ideally, they should have just taken the best material from both 'Keep It To Yourself' and 'Mullmuzzler 2' and released it on one disc, and you'd have a pretty solid prog metal album right there!

Overall, it's a good record, worth getting if you're a big Dream Theater fan, but there's definitely better side projects and solo albums out there.