Listened to the sample again, so here are my thoughts...
Snippet 1 - Very cool keyboard line and sound, love the full-band entrance too. Sounds like it'll be the album opener, but if it isn't great song intro (assuming it is one).
Snippet 2 - This definitely sounds more middle-era Dream Theater to me, though the guitars in the second part of this bit are a bit more defining, though we only hear a measure or so of it.
Snippet 3 - The first vocals we hear! They're not bad, but this sounds like a verse or pre-chorus, so there's no chance to hear a soaring vocal melody for the chorus proper, which I can only hope where JSS shines. As it is, there isn't much else to get from this bit.
Snippet 4 - Some more DT-ish noodling, despite all being in 4/4, is still sounds cool. Is that a key and guitar unison I hear?
Snippet 5 - The second bit of vocals, which sounds like a chorus here! Very short bit, but I liked this one more.
Snippet 6 - Now THIS is more like it. Very DT-instrumental-middle-section-ish here, and it sounds pretty good. Love the over-all feel here, and Mike is employing his usual use of splashes for accents that I enjoy.
Snippet 7 - The third vocal bit, and it's a very short one, sounds like a chorus into a bridge, maybe? Or another verse perhaps.
Snippet 8 - MY FAVORITE BIT! I need MORE of this. The guitars are on FIRE and I love the feel of the whole bit. I hope there's more of that on the album!
Snippet 9 - The last piece we get, and of course, it's the end of a song, which isn't anything too special here.
Assuming Mike pieced this together and each snippet is representative of a unique and separate song, we're looking at 9 songs on the album, though I could be WAY off base and there could be anywhere between 3 and 12 songs. Who knows! Either way, I hope it's an album that's at LEAST an hour long, and 80 minutes would be amazing. DS and MP seem really hyped up about this so I hope they made the maximum amount of music for this project, and I hope there's a Making Of/Behind The Scenes documentary with the album as well. I'd love to see how they put everything together, who wrote what, and how it was all done. One of my favorite parts of Neal Morse's documentaries is seeing Mike piece together the epics, and make arrangement suggestions for everyone, as, despite what some may think of his personality and drumming, his ear for arrangements is pretty top-notch. Being a HUGE music fan really shows because he's got a good ear for how music should sound, especially epics. If you listen to Neal's demos for the second Transatlantic album, and then watch the documentary for it and listen to the final songs, you can really get a sense of how much work went into those demos to change them up into the final pieces, and Mike definitely had a lot to do with that. It's actually one of the things I miss most about his absence in Dream Theater - his arranging.
At any rate, the snippets are good, but I'm not going to over-excite myself over them just yet. It is *promising* at best, and I'm sure a single will drop before September, probably when pre-orders will go out. Judging on what that first single may sound like may determine if I pre-order this one or not. At the very least, I can say I am happy with how these songs SOUND in terms of production. There's a lot of punch to the drums and the bass guitar comes through nicely.
-Marc.