Why is Systematic Chaos hated so much?

[chrisbDTM]

i would say the lyrics mostly. just silly at times

[bosk1]

...the athmospheric on Repentance, which clearly turned some fans off. And I agree that the lyrical content is sometimes weak.

I love the atmospheric approach of Repentence.  But the fact that it is both very monotone and very long does not give it a lot of long-term replay value to me.

[chrisbDTM]

repentance is diffferent, which is good. definitely one of the best on the album

[bosk1]

i would say the lyrics mostly. just silly at times

I've honestly never understood this criticism.  But whatever.

[Perpetual Change]

Yeah, "Repentance" would be a lot better, I think, if it were around 4 minutes shorter.

[Ruba]

...the athmospheric on Repentance, which clearly turned some fans off. And I agree that the lyrical content is sometimes weak.

I love the atmospheric approach of Repentence.  But the fact that it is both very monotone and very long does not give it a lot of long-term replay value to me.

OK. I don't think it's too long, but that's just me.

[BlobVanDam]

Yeah, "Repentance" would be a lot better, I think, if it were around 4 minutes shorter.

Yep, otherwise I think it's a really nice break in the 12SS, and a good song. Every time I think about the song length, I have to double check it, because it just doesn't feel like it should be over 10 minutes. It doesn't have enough variety to sustain it. I love the outro section with the distorted bass, and the vocal harmonies, and the strummed guitar, but it just repeats too much.

[chrisbDTM]

i would say the lyrics mostly. just silly at times

I've honestly never understood this criticism.  But whatever.

i always felt that petrucci's fantasy lyrics were cheesy. even if some came from Priest.

GROTESQUE CREATURES BATTLE

[bosk1]

Okay.   

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

Because people doesn't understand good music  .

Nah, I like it, but I can see why some doesn't. It's less proggy than 8VM, and they tried out some new things, like the Queen/Muse-vibe in POW, more modern metal approach in ITPOE and TDEN and the athmospheric on Repentance, which clearly turned some fans off. And I agree that the lyrical content is sometimes weak.

I dislike Constant Motion strongly, but other than that, a very good album.

I think it suffers from the "songs long for the sake of being long" conundrum. This marked the first album in which Mike Portnoy's vocals were very in the front and present, which I don't like at all. I remember him on an interview saying that helped the band have a balance between James' lighter vocals and MP's "harsh" ones... but I don't think that was quite necessary, Train of Thought did just fine with James leading the whole thing. Hell, Awake! Vocals sound friggin' heavy, harsh and melodic on that one and no "FOREVERMOAR INTO THE NIGHT BLISTERING" was needed.

I don't think so. Awake-James would've pulled TOT out nicely, but I feel his voice in 2003 lacks power. And I like most of the MP's backing vocals.

Anyway, I wouldn't like TOT very much more in that case either. Not my kind of music.

Well, obviously 1994 James had more sheer vocal power than 2003 James, but either way he handled TOT quite nicely.

[OsMosis2259]

Some great moments... some not so great moments which are mentioned above.

Not a bad album but ranks in the bottom half of DT releases for me. I do listen to it every now and then though because it's just a fun album along with Train of Thought.

The guitar solo in Repentance is one of my favorites by JP.

[Perpetual Change]

I don't mind fantasy lyrics, but I did think / still do think they seemed weird coming from DT. Previous to SC I expected very personal or otherwise intellectual lyrics from DT, so SC's fantasy lyrics were a bit jarring.

WITH THAT SAID, the fantasy lyrics on SC are actually the better ones. Forsaken and ITPOE have pretty good lyrics, in my opinion. Constant Motion and Prophets of War, not so much

[BlackInk]

i would say the lyrics mostly. just silly at times

I've honestly never understood this criticism.  But whatever.

I don't understand it either... Unless we're only talking about The Dark Eternal Night.

[Dublagent66]

SC ranks relatively low for me but I still like it.  The only low point I think is PoW.  It's not a terrible song but it's far from good IMO.  I tend to skip it.  Otherwise, it's a fairly decent album with a lot of good moments.

Fucking Ministry of Lost Fucking Souls. Put this song on an album with 11 other best DT songs and it makes for a shitty album. It's that bad. 

First of all, if you don't like TMoLS then fine.  Secondly, one bad song does not a shitty album make as I indicated above.  That said, I think for the most part, people like TMoLS, which puts you in the minority on that one anyway.

[DarkLord_Lalinc]

SC ranks relatively low for me but I still like it.  The only low point I think is PoW.  It's not a terrible song but it's far from good IMO.  I tend to skip it.  Otherwise, it's a fairly decent album with a lot of good moments.

Fucking Ministry of Lost Fucking Souls. Put this song on an album with 11 other best DT songs and it makes for a shitty album. It's that bad. 

First of all, if you don't like TMoLS then fine.  Secondly, one bad song does not a shitty album make as I indicated above.  That said, I think for the most part, people like TMoLS, which puts you in the minority on that one anyway.

[senecadawg2]

It's generally disliked for most of the reasons already stater here. Personally, I think it's kind of flat, mechanical, safe, and uninspired. It's still good, technically, it just doesn't have the same spark as the rest of DT's work. Then there's the consistency issue... half the album is just 'meh'. Songs like Constant Motion don't help. Still, different strokes for different folks. I do enjoy TDEN, Forsaken, and TMOLS quite a bit 

[Nearmyth]

I think it's less that each individual song is bad, but more that the album in inconsistent as a whole. Compared to the rest of the album, and DT music in general, I feel that Forsaken, Prophets of War, The Dark Eternal Night, and Constant Motion are all sub-par tracks (though they have their moments).

The rest of the album is some of my favorite ~50 minutes of DT... ITPOE, TMOLS, and Repentance.

[Lucidity]

This is a great question. I don't think DT have released a single bad or even weak album since... well, WDaDU. ITPoE is one of the strongest songs they've written and contains so many great themes and moods. I don't like COnstant Motion, and Forsaken and Prophets are both pretty average for me, but Ministry and In the Presence make the whole album worth it for me. And The Dark Eternal Night is just fucking awesome.

[kirksnosehair]

Here's a couple reasons:

1. Bad sequencing. The good songs on the album are frontloaded, with all the weaker songs on the album crammed together toward the middle and end. SC is probably the only DT album where there's multiple instances of back-to-back songs I don't like, which always makes me hesistant to spin the record in full. 

By extension, they didn't do the epic any favors by chopping it in half. Part One builds such great momentum, but by the time you get to Part Two, all the momentum is gone. It's like watching your favorite Football team kick off the second half of a game, when halftime just ended what could have been a scoring drive.

2. Subpar sound. The album is clippy, and tiring on the ears. The 5.1 mix is probably the most shoddily done in my collection.

3. Fantasy lyrics. Before SC, DT generally wrote lyrics that were either intellectual or personal. SC lyrics are neither. Not everyone dug the more escapist content of the record. I didn't mind it personally, but thought sounded odd coming from DT.

Pretty much all of this.

[Lucidity]

I don't think the lyrics on SC are much worse than any other DT album. DT generally doesn't have good lyrics, and DT fans generally listen for good quality music, not good quality lyrics. SC has plenty of good quality music. And I can say that I love the lyrics to The Dark Eternal Night :3

[TL]

To me, SC isn't a bad album as much as it's just not as strong as many of DT's other albums.

It basically needed three things; better sound production, some editing, and a bit more of a filter on some of the ideas that were tossed around.

Editing; There are several songs on the record that are mostly pretty good, but go on too long, or have sections that don't really flow. The Ministry of Lost Souls and Repentance are both songs that could stand to be a bit shorter. There's nothing wrong with a song being lengthy if it uses its runtime well, and there are many songs in the band's catalog that showcase this, but SC definitely has a few tracks that seem to go on or have an instrumental section just for the sake of it.

Idea filter; It's good to throw around any ideas you can think of during the writing process, and to really get the creativity flowing, but at some point, you have to decide what works and what doesn't. For instance, I'll never understand how Portnoy thought the 'deep voice vocal effect' on Repentance was a good idea. I'm not usually a fan of spoken word bits in songs anyway, but if it had just been a normal voice, I wouldn't really have had an issue with it. As is though, it just sounds silly, and takes away from the meaning of the song.
Basically, it felt like ideas were thrown in as soon as they were thought of, rather than trying them out and seeing if they actually worked.

[wolven74]

It's not a bad album. I don't think DT has put out a bad album. But the first two RR releases are their weakest imo

[TheGreatPretender]

I think it's one of DT's best albums. In fact, I just noticed a pattern why. My three favorite DT albums are SFAM, I&W and SC, and all three were the beginnings of their eras. I&W came out when DT got signed to a proper record label, and got their shot at mainstream success, it was also the first album with JLB, so I feel like it signified a new era in DT's history.

Then, they went into a downward spiral of still hoping to continue their presence in the mainstream while gradually losing control. And as soon as they got it back, and got JR on the team, SFAM was made, which I see as the beginning of the next era for DT, the era of true independence, and creative control. But with that era, they put restrictions on themselves. They tried to create that meta-album pattern, and restrict their albums to particular themes or musical styles, and while I think all those albums were great, they all do feel like they belong in the same era.

With SC, they didn't have any new members, but they did go on a new label, and SC just sounded a lot more free. It was just the band playing their balls off, with something that was Metal, but for the most part, still very melodic and progressive, and it just sounded like pouring water. Like MP said, instead of having pre-conceived ideas of what the album should be like, they just went in there and started writing and as far as I'm concerned, they ended up with something really awesome.

And if you want to consider ADTOE to be a start of a NEW era, then it really doesn't live up to that 'Fresh Start' formula. I still just consider it a part of their "RoadRunner" era. We'll see if this new album feels like something new and fresh.

[noxon]

It would be interesting to know where in the career people became fans in relation to their love/hate relationship with specific albums or songs.

I personally don't hate any of the albums, but there's the unmistaken reality of it that shows that I haven't actually listened to SC for almost 2 years now. The same holds true with SDOIT, TOT and 8V. Those albums simply do not hold my interest anymore. They did when they were new, but they haven't managed to keep it up.

I came into DT around 97, meaning FII was just about to be released or was just released. My father had been playing all the previous albums to me, but with ACOS and FII he constantly played them in the car, so I got hooked. We went to the following DT show here, and that was it. In 99 SFAM came out, and what a revelation.

But ever since then, nothing have really lived up to the excitement i felt in the beginning. And things have become sort of safe and predictable in many ways. I understand that that may just be because I now know the band intimately. That is not to say that I do not enjoy the newer albums, I really do. But they're not albums that "survive" for me. There are individual songs that do survive, but albumwise? Nope.

What many of you said about SC is things i also feel hold true to many of the other albums DT has done. And frankly, I don't think the hate is specifically pointed towards SC. I know people who fell off after SFAM that simply hates SDOIT. I know people who fell off after SDOIT that hates SFAM. And so on. Every album thus far has split the fanbase into people who hate it or love it, some maybe more than others. I still haven't seen anything -close- to the hate that FII got back in the day... Which was really strange for me, as that was the album that caught me...

[dparrott]

One of my favorite DT albums.  I think ToT is waaaaay more "metal" than SC, I mean the intro to HTF reminds me of Slayer!!! 

[JediKnight1969]

It took me some time, I admited it, but now I really like it.

[ariich]

WITH THAT SAID, the fantasy lyrics on SC are actually the better ones. Forsaken and ITPOE have pretty good lyrics, in my opinion. Constant Motion and Prophets of War, not so much

Agreed with this. I rarely find lyrics to be bad, but I really can't stand POW's. CM I don't mind so much, there are some good moments.

[Jaq]

I'm going to do it. Fuck it, I feel feisty.

There's nothing wrong with Ministry of Lost Souls. Nothing. If your complaint about it is "the instrumental is just wankery", why the hell are you listening to Dream Theater in the first place? Long instrumental wankery is one of their things. It's been since Metropolis. I never got why people would have no problem with the vast majority of songs that DT has with extended instrumental breaks hating on Ministry of Lost Souls. It's actually my second favorite song on SC if you count ITPOE as a single song. I just don't get why THIS song, which does things DT's been doing regularly since the beginning, is wrong for doing what DT does.

As for the album itself, generally I reach for it LONG before I do Octavarium these days. Long before.

[MoraWintersoul]

I'm going to do it. Fuck it, I feel feisty.

There's nothing wrong with Ministry of Lost Souls. Nothing. If your complaint about it is "the instrumental is just wankery", why the hell are you listening to Dream Theater in the first place? Long instrumental wankery is one of their things. It's been since Metropolis. I never got why people would have no problem with the vast majority of songs that DT has with extended instrumental breaks hating on Ministry of Lost Souls. It's actually my second favorite song on SC if you count ITPOE as a single song. I just don't get why THIS song, which does things DT's been doing regularly since the beginning, is wrong for doing what DT does.

God bless.

[bosk1]

There's nothing wrong with Ministry of Lost Souls. Nothing. If your complaint about it is "the instrumental is just wankery", why the hell are you listening to Dream Theater in the first place? Long instrumental wankery is one of their things. It's been since Metropolis. I never got why people would have no problem with the vast majority of songs that DT has with extended instrumental breaks hating on Ministry of Lost Souls. It's actually my second favorite song on SC if you count ITPOE as a single song. I just don't get why THIS song, which does things DT's been doing regularly since the beginning, is wrong for doing what DT does.

For me, I like the instrumental section.  But I don't like the rest of the song.  I just don't.  I hate describing it this way, but I can't think of a better description, so here you go:  It just sounds very "Dream Theater by numbers."  You are right that it sounds like what DT has been doing since the beginning.  But it feels like a lesser quality version of all the stereotypical things DT does, just for the sake of lumping together all the stereotypical things DT does, but without the enthusiasm or creativity that I like about them.  Beyond that, it's hard to put into words.

[Jaffa]

This is pure speculation on my part, but I think part of this album's problem is that almost nobody likes all of it.  I mean, I'm sure there are a few people out there who think that Systematic Chaos is perfect from start to finish, but as a general rule, most DT fans seem to find at least one song they aren't too fond of on this album. 

To put it another way, almost every song has some element (or elements) it is commonly criticized for.  Several of these common complaints have already been brought up in this thread – the length and lack of variety of Repentance, the fantasy lyrics of Forsaken and The Dark Eternal Night, the vocal delivery of certain lines in Constant Motion.  A lot of people feel that the instrumental section of The Ministry of Lost Souls doesn't fit with the rest of the long.  Similar complaints are made about In the Presence of Enemies part II, with many people feeling that The Reckoning is overlong or entirely out of place.  Some people are put off by the dance vibe of Prophets of War, while others criticize the song for MP's 'rap' section or the song's lyrics in general. 

All of these complaints are, of course, entirely subjective.  Some people would strongly disagree with some of them.  But at the same time, I think most people would agree with at least one of them.  For instance, I myself strongly disagree with a lot of the complaints about Forsaken and Prophets of War, but on the other hand, I definitely think that Repentance is way too long for its own good. 

So for me, Repentance is the album's weak link.  For a lot of others, Prophets of War is the weak link.  There's probably somebody out there for whom In the Presence of Enemies part 1 is the weak link.  But the key thing is, for almost everybody, there's a weak link.  What that weak link is varies from person to person, but for almost everybody, there's something keeping Systematic Chaos from being a favorite of theirs.

And I think that's basically where the album's reputation comes from.  It's not so much that people hate all of it, it's just that people have various reasons not to love it.  It has so many different flaws perceived by so many different people that it just sort of starts to be perceived as a flawed album.


TL;DR version: It's not that there's one thing everybody hates about the album, it's that most people hate at least one song on the album. 

[ariich]

For what it's worth, I like the album quite a bit. Bottom half of the DT league table, but still really good.

And I love TMOLS, one of my favourite DT songs!

[noxon]

28th of april, 2007 i wrote this about The Ministry of Lost Souls: "A good track, but not particularly memorable for me. It doesn't even get really interesting until the 7 minute mark – before that it is pretty generic and forgettable."

I even made the comparison of it being a carbon copy of the structure of sacrificed sons...

I didn't like the song back then, and I like it even less now. I can't even remember how it really goes without actually putting it on.

[johncal]

I would rate it as my least favorite. It would go up a few notches if it had different lyrical content. I prefer uplifting lyrics or those like in ADTOE, where even if not specifically uplifting they are relevant in terms of real life experiences, and I haven't had any vampire or monster experiences to relate to... lately anyways.. This isn't saying I don't like the album, just not as much as the others.

[TheGreatPretender]

I would rate it as my least favorite. It would go up a few notches if it had different lyrical content. I prefer uplifting lyrics or those like in ADTOE, where even if not specifically uplifting they are relevant in terms of real life experiences, and I haven't had any vampire or monster experiences to relate to... lately anyways.. This isn't saying I don't like the album, just not as much as the others.

See, I prefer the fantasy lyrics. The 'life experience' lyrics are exactly what puts SDOIT and BCSL lower on my list of albums. I want music to take me far away, to see things not yet seen, where everyone's gathered for my arrival.