Well its certainly been an eventful 12 months for Dream Theater, with the departure of founding member and drummer Mike Portnoy. Fans of this band were probably confused as to what was next for the band, I myself didn't htink this would ever happen to the band but it did and it didn't really bother me that much. The main reason I didn't care for the departure was that Portnoy was ruining the band at times, particularly the terrible backing vocals from the last two album. I've been a massive fan of the band over the years and caught them live a couple of years ago one of my favourite shows ever infact with some of my favourite tracks played that night.
Now to this album, on drums we have Mike Mangini as soon as Portnoy left it made sense to bring him in, obviously hes a strong drummer but also had already worked with James Labrie on his solo albums. Unfortunately he didn't write the drums for this album Petrucci did and while its a little weird it makes sense for this release. The drums on this are great not as over the top as they used to be, whether its just because Portnoy isn't there turning it up on the mix or the drumming is much more subtle I like it.
One thing you can expect from this band is cheesy as fuck lyrics so I didn't really have a problem with them they were merely just a normal thing for their album. Labrie however does do a great job vocally, some hate his vocals, some like them I'm certainly on the side that most of the time when hes on form he really does sound great. It's weird I usually feel like I'm going to have to deal with heaps of over the top shit on this album but thankfully it's not really the case whether thats cause Portnoy isn't there and the drums aren't so obvious but the songs all floow nicely.
The album does have some annoying moments from Jordan Rudess' keyboard playing but it isn't the whole album so one can be forgiven. The album opener and track released early On The Back Of Angels when I first heard it had me worried that this would be really bad but its grown on me to become at the very least a solid song on this.
I think this album isn't anything too special it does sound at times like Dream Theater of old and some of the jams are pretty cool. Theres no track to me that blows me away and has me wanting to listen to this album over and over. The album is also long as fuck which is a little frustrating 77 minutes is just too long for this four 10 minute tracks is one too many in my opinion.
Overall this isn't a bad album but more a decent release, its definitely better than Systematic Chaos and probably a couple of other recent releases. This is just too long of a listen, but if your a die hard fan of this band you will definitely like it but I'm not sure how much.
Overall Rating: 7/10
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