Systematic Chaos is amazing.

[BlobVanDam]

PMU was the only chance of a hit they ever had, given the style of music they play. At that time it still somewhat intersected with mainstream, but then quickly after that operatic singing and fast solos became associated with the excesses of glam metal, and so they became marginalized. For a very long time they were musicians making music for musicians.
Now they're frankly too old to have a hit.

Ozzy still has "hits".

He has singles, but I wouldn't really say they're hits that drive album sales. The difference is that he's established enough that singles are just standard advertising for existing fans to know there's an album. It's unlikely he's gaining a significant number of new fans from "hits" these days. Same with DT.

As he shouldn't be. Not until he releases some decent music akin to his 80s stuff anyway. Pipe dream?

Yes, a beautiful pipe dream. I'd even like to hear him back with Jake E Lee.

[MrBoom_shack-a-lack]

I think DT have plenty of songs that could be big hits, but Forsaken isn't one of them. I don't think it's bad, but it isn't really that exciting either. In fact, it's kind of boring.

A hit is always unpredictable!
Every Nirvana song is boring! Every Oasis song is boring! Coldplay, Bon Jovi.... you name it!

What are you talking about?

[rumborak]

Prog troll. Don't feed it.

[Outcrier]

A hit is always unpredictable!
Every Nirvana song is boring! Every Oasis song is boring! Coldplay, Bon Jovi.... you name it!

What are you talking about?

I was wondering too...

[TheGreatPretender]

I think DT have plenty of songs that could be big hits, but Forsaken isn't one of them. I don't think it's bad, but it isn't really that exciting either. In fact, it's kind of boring.

A hit is always unpredictable!
Every Nirvana song is boring! Every Oasis song is boring! Coldplay, Bon Jovi.... you name it!

Darling, you give prog a bad name.

[King Postwhore]

Freddy Mercury I presume.

[bl5150]

Yes, a beautiful pipe dream. I'd even like to hear him back with Jake E Lee.

Now you're talking - although based on what I've seen of him in recent times I'm not sure Jake has it any more.  Would certainly have my attention in any case.  I love everything Ozzy did up until around No More Tears and perhaps Ozzmosis but it was the (under rated) Jake era that I really grew up with.

[KevShmev]

tiagodon,

[BlobVanDam]

Yes, a beautiful pipe dream. I'd even like to hear him back with Jake E Lee.

Now you're talking - although based on what I've seen of him in recent times I'm not sure Jake has it any more.  Would certainly have my attention in any case.  I love everything Ozzy did up until around No More Tears and perhaps Ozzmosis but it was the (under rated) Jake era that I really grew up with.

There are a few good tunes on the Red Dragon Cartel album that make me think he could pull out a classic album with Ozzy, even if he's not as good as he was in his prime.
Ozzmosis is also very underrated there, bud.

[tiagodon]

I think DT have plenty of songs that could be big hits, but Forsaken isn't one of them. I don't think it's bad, but it isn't really that exciting either. In fact, it's kind of boring.

A hit is always unpredictable!
Every Nirvana song is boring! Every Oasis song is boring! Coldplay, Bon Jovi.... you name it!

Darling, you give prog a bad name.

I'm not talking about prog. I'm talking about how hits are unpredictable. There are many lousy rock songs out there that became hits.
One said that Forsaken is boring. I mentioned a few rock bands with a boring sound (to me) that produced some hits. Sorry if you all don't like Forsaken. I really like it. It's not even a prog song. It's traditional heavy metal. And it's catchy. I really think it would have made to the charts back in the 80s. It is as good as any Ozzy song of the good old days. But it is just my opinion. Music is not mathematics.

[TheGreatPretender]

I think DT have plenty of songs that could be big hits, but Forsaken isn't one of them. I don't think it's bad, but it isn't really that exciting either. In fact, it's kind of boring.

A hit is always unpredictable!
Every Nirvana song is boring! Every Oasis song is boring! Coldplay, Bon Jovi.... you name it!

Darling, you give prog a bad name.

I'm not talking about prog. I'm talking about how hits are unpredictable. There are many lousy rock songs out there that became hits.
One said that Forsaken is boring. I mentioned a few rock bands with a boring sound (to me) that produced some hits. Sorry if you all don't like Forsaken. I really like it. It's not even a prog song. It's traditional heavy metal. And it's catchy. I really think it would have made to the charts back in the 80s. It is as good as any Ozzy song of the good old days. But it is just my opinion. Music is not mathematics.

It was a Bon Jovi joke, but I guess it's lost on you? 

But I do agree, what makes a hit song does not reflect how good or how interesting it is. Certain bands get big because they just happen to have the right sound at the right time, as was the case with Pull Me Under, but honestly, most of the time, the one key factor that determines a hit song is how much money the label is willing to spend to promote it. If a song gets played on the radio multiple times per day, every day, it will become a hit, I hear that crap happen every day. And it all starts with marketing. And DT has always had sub-par marketing. I mean, for a non-mainstream Metal band, it's about as good as one can expect, but it's not nearly enough to make any of their songs hits. It doesn't reflect on the quality or catchiness of their music. And Forsaken is an awesome song, by the way, nothing boring about it.

[rumborak]

I think you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Sure, there's the occasional popular song that got there undeservedly, but the really big ones are usually there for a reason. As many prog snobs scream "omg, Call Me Maybe is a terrible song!! Mainstream listeners are idiots!!", reality is, it's a fucking brilliant song that will lodge itself in your head for days.

And Bon Jovi, not only are their songs rock solid fun rock songs, but Jon Bon Jovi literally oozes charisma. DT is great, but they have no front man.

[Kotowboy]

RE Call me maybe. I'm not against a good well written pop song. But that song is all chorus. I don't think it has a verse.

[TheGreatPretender]

I think you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Sure, there's the occasional popular song that got there undeservedly, but the really big ones are usually there for a reason. As many prog snobs scream "omg, Call Me Maybe is a terrible song!! Mainstream listeners are idiots!!", reality is, it's a fucking brilliant song that will lodge itself in your head for days.

And Bon Jovi, not only are their songs rock solid fun rock songs, but Jon Bon Jovi literally oozes charisma. DT is great, but they have no front man.

First of all, don't get me wrong, I get what you're saying. But before that song lodges itself in your head, you have to hear it at least twice. It took a few listens before I started waking up with "All About That Bass" or "Shake It Off" stuck in my head, and if the radio didn't play those songs at least twice during my regular work day, that would not have happened.

And while I think you're grossly exaggerating by saying DT has no front man, there have been plenty of mainstream hits in rock where their front men didn't have very much charisma. Heck, going back to those 90s, Korn immediately comes to mind.

[KevShmev]

I don't think Jon Bon oozes charisma that much, so much as girls just find him dreamy as hell, which sure helped back in the 80s, when they were vaulted into the stratosphere of enduring rock popularity.  Sure, their catchy hits were the main catalysts for their popularity, but having a lead singer that girls swoon over sure does help, too.

[TheGreatPretender]

I think Bon Jovi just has a very easily palatable singing voice. It's just easy and pleasant to listen to. But again, he's not the only example of a rock act who got mainstream success, and they weren't all like that.

[KevShmev]

Aerosmith has the ugliest front man ever, and look at how popular they have been for a long time. 

[Sycsa]

I always thought I liked Systematic Chaos. Both parts of ITPOE are great, TDEN is crazy fun and energetic with a cool chorus (not to mention that killer riff at the end), same can be said for CM, to a lesser extent, TMOLS and Forsaken are nice. However, for the first time, I tried to listen to it as a whole while traveling and it was a hell of a chore. Same for BCSL (Wither and AROP are the worst offenders there). Man, they've improved a lot with MM.

[rumborak]

Aerosmith has the ugliest front man ever, and look at how popular they have been for a long time.

Say what you will, Steven Tyler has a ton of charisma.

[rumborak]

And while I think you're grossly exaggerating by saying DT has no front man,

I don't think I am. A front man, in my definition, drives the show, is the go-to point of focus during the show.
A case in point, there were times shortly before MP left where MP was more of the live front man than JLB. Think of that, the drummer outshining the singer!
DT is what it is if course. But, the lack of a strong, driving front man just adds to their difficulty of making it big.

[TheGreatPretender]

And while I think you're grossly exaggerating by saying DT has no front man,

I don't think I am. A front man, in my definition, drives the show, is the go-to point of focus during the show.
A case in point, there were times shortly before MP left where MP was more of the live front man than JLB. Think of that, the drummer outshining the singer!
DT is what it is if course. But, the lack of a strong, driving front man just adds to their difficulty of making it big.

MP outshining JLB says more about the former than the latter. With all due respect to MP, he was outright hogging the attention. What was JLB gonna do? Say, "Back down, man, I'm the one who's supposed to get the crowd going"? JLB doesn't have that much of an ego. But now that MP is out of the picture, JLB does a great job of interacting with the crowd, as well as speaking on behalf of the band at interviews and such. There have been plenty of more successful bands with lesser front men than JLB, don't put it all on him.

[tiagodon]

So you guys think that if DT had a frontman like Axl Rose, Jon Bon Jovi or Steven Tyler they would be bigger?

[rumborak]

I'm obviously not talking about vocal qualities, that is a totally different matter. But yes, if DT had made their concerts more of an "personalized event",  by for example having a strongly engaging front man, they would have been bigger, IMHO.
Let's be honest, while DT are great concerts to the likes of us who raise an eyebrow when JP's bend is off by a fraction, it is somewhat "clinical". I saw Pomplamoose live the other day, and while the band made small flubs on a regular basis, they managed to draw me into the performance like DT never has.

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

I don't think DT is in desperate need of a frontman. People usually go to their concerts to see the musicians play, not to follow just one man on stage. I think JLB realizes that and keeps his crowd interaction to the right amount.

With that thought on the table, I think that DT's last years with Portnoy weren't their best (speaking of the live situation). Watching MP wanting to be funny, with the mic always in his mouth and arse-and-ball-sing every song was somewhat exhausting.

[rumborak]

I'm not saying DT should change anything. If anything, the time for that would have been 15 years ago.
DT draws a certain crowd who loves them. But if they ever had wanted to become huge, they would have needed a strong front man, one that makes the guy in row 100 think he got a front row seat.

To use a convenient idiom, DT has a hard time breaking the fourth wall.

[TheGreatPretender]

I'm not saying DT should change anything. If anything, the time for that would have been 15 years ago.
DT draws a certain crowd who loves them. But if they ever had wanted to become huge, they would have needed a strong front man, one that makes the guy in row 100 think he got a front row seat.

To use a convenient idiom, DT has a hard time breaking the fourth wall.

Yeah, but it can't be denied that part of the reason they never did go so huge was because of their music. Because a lot of people just don't have the patience to sit through a 7 minute song, let alone a 13+ minute one, with constant time changes, odd patterns that you can't headbang to, and often a lack of recurring choruses, making it difficult to sing along to. One or two simple songs per album wasn't going to sell them. Prog has been a niche genre for a long, long time, and if they REALLY wanted to get big, getting a more interactive front man would not have saved them unless they had changed the kinds of song structures they write. In other words, unless they had completely changed who they were, and become full on sell-outs.

[rumborak]

Your comments come across as the usual "people are too ADHD/retarded to comprehend DT" type of response.
Yes, their protracted instrumental sections and breakneck changes of rhythm don't lend them to easy radio play, but as a counter-example I would bring forth "Paranoid Android" by Radiohead. Huge hit of theirs, and the same year as FII. The song is pretty damn prog, so the question is not "why aren't people receptive to prog", but rather " why can't DT sell their prog?"

[TheGreatPretender]

Well, we can't really definitively say WHY they can't sell it unless something suddenly changed and they DID manage to sell it. I just don't think it's fair to pin it all on one member.

[tiagodon]

Gotta think it over...

Imagine a beautiful and charismatic frontman, with cool tattoos, running and jumping on stage, with a powerful voice... Would it have helped DT sell their prog? Well, I can't deny it is a strong and compelling idea...

[Implode]

Well, we can't really definitively say WHY they can't sell it unless something suddenly changed and they DID manage to sell it. I just don't think it's fair to pin it all on one member.

Just chiming in to say that almost every time someone has told me they don't like DT, it was because they didn't like JLB.

[TheGreatPretender]

Gotta think it over...

Imagine a beautiful and charismatic frontman, with cool tattoos, running and jumping on stage, with a powerful voice... Would it have helped DT sell their prog? Well, I can't deny it is a strong and compelling idea...

Well, considering that they auditioned over 200 vocalists before deciding on LaBrie, clearly he was their best choice. And he hasn't done wrong by them since. It's not his fault people can't appreciate him for all he's worth.
And sure, they could've found someone with more stage presence, who ran around the stage and interacted with the audience a lot more, but it's difficult enough to find a vocalist who can sing well, period, let alone someone with all those qualities, and only become increasingly so as time went on.

[rumborak]

Well, we can't really definitively say WHY they can't sell it unless something suddenly changed and they DID manage to sell it. I just don't think it's fair to pin it all on one member.

Just chiming in to say that almost every time someone has told me they don't like DT, it was because they didn't like JLB.

Same here. A lot of people say "great music, but the voice...". And indeed, for quite a whole I was in the same camp.

[jammindude]

Well, we can't really definitively say WHY they can't sell it unless something suddenly changed and they DID manage to sell it. I just don't think it's fair to pin it all on one member.

Just chiming in to say that almost every time someone has told me they don't like DT, it was because they didn't like JLB.

Same here. A lot of people say "great music, but the voice...". And indeed, for quite a whole I was in the same camp.

In my experience, it's depended a lot on what type of singers the person I was showing them to was used to.   JLB is a bit of an old school 80's type "hair metal" singer.    But even MP admitted that they were looking for something along those lines (directly citing Steve Perry among others).   So someone from a metal background who isn't into that style of singing would be immediately turned off by it anyway. 

[TheGreatPretender]

Honestly, I'll be the first person to admit that JLB's voice took some time to grow on me, but when I first heard the music, it blew me away. So much so that I said, "This music is worth listening to, even if I have to tolerate the vocalist." And yes, at the time, I was very much in the mind state that associated Metal with heavier, and lower timbre vocals. And higher timbre vocals, like JLB's normal tone, I often associated with the Skater Punk genre, which I hated, so that was a bit of a barrier for me.
Either way, the point is, the music was great enough to keep me listening, and as time went on, JLB has become one of my favorite vocalists ever. He's got a very unique vocal quality, and people who aren't used to it have a harder time enjoying it, because their ear isn't really accustomed to it, so it's almost jarring in a way, I think. But then again, the very nature of DT's music is like that. When you first hear it, the crazy time changes and weird structures, it's a bit jarring at first too. So all of it takes time to grow on you, but once it does, it's there to stay.

[Kotowboy]

My first experience of JLB was the Master Of Puppets live cover - which is probably his worst vocal period ever.

Not the best introduction.