Metal Reviews

This needs a poll.

For me it's a miss. As a follow up to Train Of Thought, it falls flat. This is how the album goes for me:

1) Root Of All Evil: Passable. Not bad, but not outstanding. Portnoy seems a little self-important and pretentious writing 3 songs spanning 3 albums about his alcoholism. The Glass Prison was fucking awesome, but it should've ended there. This Dying Soul rules on musical terms, but I can't really care about Portnoy's ongoing battle with booze anymore. At The Root Of All Evil, I just want it to stop.

2) The Answer Lies Within: Meh. Soft ballad stuff, not as engaging as their other soft ballad stuff. Pretty generic.

3) These Walls: Ha. Please.

4) I Walk Beside You: YOU ARE NOT U2 AND SHOULD NEVER TRY TO BE

5) Panic Attack: More of a return to form, but it's still pretty generic. Good, but not great.

6) Never Enough: On musical terms, it's pretty alright, but "WHY DON'T YOU GUYS APPRECIATE US WE'RE DREAM THEATER APPRECIATE US" is pretty dumb.

7) Sacrificed Sons: Pretty stinkin' great. Still a bit watered-down, I think, but it kicks ass basically.

8) Octavarium: Hell yeah motherfucker

So yeah. I call that a miss overall.

Miss. Octavarium is one of their best songs ever but everything else is pretty lame.

Definite hit.

Root Of All Evil is one of my all-time favorite DT songs (may be even my overall favorite). And I think you should've mentioned that Repentance from Systematic Chaos is the fourth part of Portnoy's alcoholism saga.

What does everybody hate These Walls? I love that song's chorus.

Octavarium is also a great song. As is Panic Attack (especially that choir).

The Answer Lies Within sounds a little smug (as if LeBrie is a little too proud of his own compassion), but it's still a good song.

Every other song is also quite solid.

Epitome of boring DT? I believe so.

Major hit. If the 'Razor's Edge' part of the title track doesn't hit you like a perfect sphere, then you should consider getting help. Or start listening to music genres besides thrash.

Everything else is pretty awesome too. Sure, I Walk Beside You and Never Enough are (respectively) U2 and Muse emulations, but they're good emulations. The Answer Lies Within is a song I need to be in a certain mood to appreciate, but I don't automatically skip over it like I do These Walls.

Dream Theater's only boring album is Systematic Chaos, due to its soullessness. Octavarium has heart, and I really wish DT went further with that poppy sound.

I Walk Beside You is so horrible, I couldn't believe what I was hearing the first time.

There's a 4th part?

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF--



There's no such thing as a good U2 emulation, and there never will be. Hell, the words "good" and "U2" should never be spoken in the same sentence unless saying "U2 are so not good that it's astounding" or something like that.

I think Octavarium (the song) as a great song, and is the only one I listen to of that album. And is the last one... Perhaps if Octavarium was first, I'll keep listening the rest of the album, but being the last one, I just want to skip the rest to listen to it.

So a miss imo.

Miss my least favourite DT release. It was the stuff from Scenes and earlier albums that were by far the best when I saw them live. Yeah the later albums mainly 6DOIT and Train of Thought have many good tracks amongst them. I just think their influences are showing too much on newer albums.

Miss... Root of all evil is good. the answer lies within is the definition of boring. I walk beside you sounds like something sung in church. These Walls sounds like Entwine (which is okay since Entwine is pretty cool). Apart from that ugly bass intro, Panic Attack is pretty awesome. Never Again is allright. Sacrificed sons and Octavarium is very good. TRAPPED INSIDE THIS OCT-A-VAR-I-UM!

Hit. Actually, everything apart from Falling Into Infinity and Six Degrees is.

Interesting that this was viewed as one of their best when it came out...

Big hit for me too. The s/t is by far the best song on the album and one of the best ever by Dream Theater.

There is no Dream Theater miss.

I've noticed that too. Octavarium seems to be one of those albums people really liked when it first came out, but gradually became less popular as time went on. Two more such examples would be We've Come For You All (by Anthrax) and Down To Earth (by Ozzy Osbourne).

And in response to the people who complain about this album being too pop-like, didn't DT always have a bit of a pop sensibility? Hell, at the beginning of Take The Time, they sounded almost like a boy band!

Slight Hit. When it first came out I was all over it but as the years have gone on some of the songs have become extremely boring. So it didn't stand the test of time that well. However 4 of the songs are awesome and 4 are meh.. But since 1 of the awesome songs is 24 minutes long there is definately more awesome than meh, making it a hit, but only slightly.

Hit. After the relative monotonous Train of Thought, Octavarium has more different styles and not only thrash and heavy stuff. It's more like Scenes from a Memory. Only Sacrificed Sons and These Walls are a little bit boring. They could be easily on the first side of Six Degrees...

Yea, i voted hit. Relaxing album.

Yeh, that's what I like about it. Train Of Thought and Systematic Chaos can be a bit too heavy-going at times.

Something like that. I haven't listened to it in a long time, though.

50\50