Honor Thy Father (vs) The Best of Times

[Vajra]

I hate my Dad (vs) I love my Dad

I always thought it was ironic that the two songs present two complete opposite feelings regarding the sam person. Must have been a unique relationship.

Anyway, which song do you prefer? My vote goes to HTF. I think it's one of their best heavy songs. I've never been much a fan for TBOT.

edit: Mind=Blown, Honor Thy Father is about his Step dad. I never even knew he had a step dad.

[SystematicThought]

Honor Thy Father is about his step-dad. The Best of Times is about his biological dad Howard.

Anyways, I prefer TBOT

[The Letter M]

HTF is about his Step-dad TBOT is about his real dad Howard.

Anyways, I prefer TBOT

This... is exactly what I was going to post. (Well, maybe not word-for-word, but pretty much)

-Marc.

[SystematicThought]

I was afraid that someone was going to beat me to the punch, so I typed it up pretty fast. I would have said biological instead of real and it would have had more punctuation 

[Vajra]

Wait so...

MP's mom and dad got divorced. His mom remarried, and then his mom died afterwards? Is that how it happened?

[SystematicThought]

You know, I have never been quite clear on that either. But yes, I believe so. They got a divorce, and his dad stayed out in California. They went back to NY and she remarried.

[Hayden]

I actually much prefer "Honor Thy Father". Portnoy, it seems, managed to harness his aggression and frustration in a manner that translated into a well-written song. So often reactive/reactionary sorts of tracks tend to come off as uninspired and forced, as though the writer wanted to make an attack more than they wanted to make a quality song. This doesn't appear to be the case on "HTF"; sure, aggression has been poured into this track, but a great degree of thought has also gone into it. The result: one terrific piece of heavy progressive metal.

Now, "The Best of Times" I don't care for much at all. Yes, it's sweet, and yes, it's a nice song, but I've got some major gripes with it. A) it's not very interesting, musically, and b) it's ridiculously drawn out and overblown without there being much variation at all. The track is repetitive, it's excessive, and it quite simply has no business being 13 minutes long. Ultimately, this results in a rather poor song overall.

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

Honor thy Father.

[Zydar]

The Best Of Times.

[wammabe]

The Best of Times, I wish it could be remade with more thought into it though...

[CrimsonSunrise]

Honor Thy Father

[Mladen]

The Best of times, no contest.

[Zook]

Honor Thy Father by a miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and mi

[metropofreak]

The Best of Times. I mean, how can you not just fall in love with the outro solo?

[nikatapi]

Honor Thy Father. I really like it both musically and lyrically.

[Vajra]

Honor Thy Father by a miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and miles and mi

Nugget?

[reo73]

HTF all the way

[Chrissalix]

The Best of Times. I mean, how can you not just fall in love with the outro solo?

Because it's cheesy as shit and I felt like i'd heard it before several times. It's the same with most of the melodies in that song actually. The strings are ripped from a part of Octavarium and the first electric guitar riff is basically Spirit of Radio by Rush. The lyrics were too raw to even be listened to at times. At least Honor Thy Father was controlled and seemed a subtle approach. TBOT really wasn't. It's probably the DT track I dislike most, though I understand why it had to be done and put on the album.

[krands85]

I much prefer Honor Thy Father, love the aggression.

I've never really liked TBOT that much. The beginning and ending of the song are great, but it's let down by the middle for me. I don't like the lyrics either, they just grate on me for some reason.

[Ħ]

Honor Thy Father.  Best song on ToT.  As opposed to TBOT, which could be the worst on BCASL.

[Addy]

Honor Thy Father BY FAR. Musically and especially lyrically. Yeah, if The Best of times was half that long, it'd be better. Love the solo, but that's all. Honor Thy Father is a great song, from start to finish.

[j]

I don't like either.  But I actually think TBOT is one of the few songs that HTF is better than.

-J

[WildeSilas]

I prefer HTF. TBOT's lyrics are just the 4th in a LONG line of songs with terrible lyrics on BCSL and even if the song itself were great (and it's not - 13 minutes of redundancy wtf?) I'm so embarrassed by all the cheesy lyrics on the preceding songs that I just can't take it anymore.

[jsem]

The Best of Times, I wish it could be remade with more thought into it though...

[Lowdz]

TBOT. I like the Rush influence making a comeback.

HTF was too Nu- Metal for me. It's ok but there are parts I don't like (the crooked step).

[Lionheart1827]

The Best of Times. I mean, how can you not just fall in love with the outro solo?

Definitely this.

That solo is so good. I remember first hearing the album and I kept hitting back on the song just to hear it. Blew me away.

[pogoowner]

They're both among the band's weakest songs. Gotta go with Honor They Father, though.

[MasterLomaxus]

Honor Thy Father is quite possibly the worst DT song.  Therefore, I choose The Best of Times.

[Adami]

TBOT.



Not sure why so many people end up being able to look past TCOT's lyrics, but can't see past TBOT's lyrics.

[SupermanJLU]

Honor Thy Father, No Contest.

[Millais]

Honor thy Father for me.
although TBoT is ruddy good - especially the end.

[Ben_Jamin]

Honor Thy Father

TBOT is amazing, but it is a tad too long, and the repeated "days" annoy me.

[IdoSC]

TBOT.

It's more emotional, it's a wonderful song, structured amazingly, touching, lyrics are rather heartwarming. JP's solo is incredible, LaBrie's singing is very touching, and for one I truly appreciate MP's backing vocals. The best song out of BCSL imo.
HTF is aggressive, the lyrics are rather immature (and it's also one of the only songs where they pointlessly 'swear'), the instrumental section/that section with the samples is kinda boring.

In short: TBOT is a top 10 DT song, HTF is barely a top 50 song. IMO.

[Vajra]

lyrics are rather heartwarming

I'm probably going to get flamed for this, but I'm just going to speak my opinion. I respect the lyrics of TBOT for what they stand for, as they obviously mean a lot to Mike, and it does fit the context of the song well, but with all that being said, the lyrics from a literary persective are pretty damn awful, I'd say along with TCOT, they are the worst lyrics DT has ever done.

Maybe I'm wrong, but with these two songs, it seems as though there was literally no effort put into the writing of them what so ever. What happened to the majestic poetry of A Change of Seasons or Innocenc Faded? With TBOT and TCOT we weren't given poetry, but rather sentences strung together to form a song. In conclusion, I just hate these lyrics lol.

(all imo)

[Jaq]

Let's see:

Honor Thy Father is one of my least favorite Dream Theater songs, period. It feels like forced aggression, the only time on ToT that I think DT was trying to be heavy for the sake of being heavy, and the lyrics are dreadful. The Best Of Times is a well intentioned song that falls a little flat, which is a shame given the subject matter, but it has THAT OUTRO SOLO. The Best of Times wins.