re new image: Yeah I don't really get the "tough guy" vibe the DT12 promo pictures, I think they're really in good taste, especially the one rumbo linked. At least the majority of them have to wear long sleeves so that they don't look like teenagers, and if more than one of them wears the same black button-up shirt (the most "mature" solution) it would look silly, so why not opt for lightweight leather jackets? MM's zipper longsleeve isn't too distracting either.
And I don't get how MM is "fake dyeing" his hair, he's pretty much for realsies dyeing it?
JLB's been doing that for twenty years anyway, and MM dyes it to his natural shade so it's not exactly noticeable. You'd think that after JP's super saiyan hair/Hot Topic phase and MP's blue beard we'd grow a thicker skin
black shirts with subtle designs (they've ditched most of the Ed Hardy stuff) and dark jeans are basically a step away from streetwear, and they look like dudes who've been doing metal for more than 25 years, which they are. Just because they're more known for their musicianship than for anything else doesn't mean that they should cut the hair and ditch the black.
re the Octavariumly recurring JLB discussion: whenever I felt sorry for the fact that the food poisoning had happened, I was almost always sorry not for what "he could have sounded like now" (it's not like he can sound better for his age than he does already, and his voice sounds like it naturally changed over time now, anyway), but for the "lost" years in between. Think of Awake being performed in full potential of his young voice on tour (we only have a couple of recordings showcasing this), OIALT being a solid gold performance, Live Scenes too (he was VERY solid in there, but we coulda had a DVD quality performance of the elusive F#), full stability on tours up to Octavarium etc. Realistically he would have hit his prime somewhere between FII and SDOIT, learning how to control his voice wonderfully while regaining its full range and power.