A DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS

Everyone knows Dream Theater's astonishing history. Coming out of nowhere (kind of, if you skip their largely ignored first album) with Images and Words and blowing everyone away. Well those days are long gone, and the creative spark that once burned so brightly has long since faded and gone out altogether.

If you rate this album against all of Dream Theater's others, it's a 2 star effort at best. It only doesn't merit 1 star because it isn't offensively bad like Systematic Chaos, it's just incredibly bland and boring. I was really hoping that Portnoy's departure would finally reverse the trend they've been following of becoming more and more of a regular metal band who occasionally plays random notes very fast. Sadly, this is still here in full force. Certain things have been improved with Portnoy leaving in some areas (he doesn't sing/growl anymore, for a start), but astonishingly I'd go so far as to say this is worse without him.

When Mangini was brought in I think a lot of people who had grown tired of the bland formula Dream Theater appear to have settled in hoped we'd see a return to form. Unfortunately, the chances of this happening were dealt a blow when we discovered that the entire album had already been written and - amazingly - Mangini wouldn't even be allowed to write his own drum parts. Instead, Petrucci, a guitarist, wrote them for him. This is completely inexcusable to me, and it really shows on the record. The drums are barely there, the weakest they've probably ever been on a Dream Theater album. It also spoke volumes about how inflexible they've become, especially for a band that once blazed a trail of originality and variation.

The closest thing I can compare it to in their catalogue is Octavarium, itself an incredibly boring album, except without the fantastic title track to elevate it above tedium. There isn't a single song on here that I'd consider to be "good" in any sense of the word, and none of them even begin to approach being great. There's one 3 or 4 minute section in the second half of Breaking All Illusions that's worth a listen, and that's it for the entire album, it's quite remarkable. The people saying things like "it's one of their three best, along with Images & Words and Scenes"... I really don't even know what to say. How anyone can love an album like Images & Words and somehow compare it to A Dramatic Turn of Events is beyond me.

If it wasn't for Systematic Chaos (which I consider one of the worst albums ever made - by any band) this would be the weakest album in the band's history. Sadly Portnoy's replacement hasn't made a tiny bit of difference. One can only hope that next time around Mangini will have some input, and Dream Theater will go back to doing something they were once great at - being original - but I've long since lost interest.

It honestly makes me sad, once upon a time Dream Theater were my favourite band, a powerhouse in their genre. But something happened after Six Degrees, and everything they've done since then - with the exception of a handful of great songs - has been bland/boring/uninteresting/tedious/repetitious, or just plain bad.

Bonus Game: Listen for all the melodies and other elements they've ripped from past albums for this one, there's a lot.