Now that we have 15 albums from the band, which group of five albums do you like more? The first five released before the turn of the century, the middle five released in the 2000s, or the five released with Mangini?
And since everyone here is also into ranking things, how would you rank these groups?
Personally speaking, I think the middle five might be my favorite, as much as I love IAW and SFAM, SDOIT and Octavarium are two of my favorites and that period is where I came to discover the band, but the first five would probably be very close behind it. That, of course, isn't to crap on the Mangini albums, as much as I've really liked AVFTTOTW so far, and really enjoyed DOT and ADTOE, but some of DT12 and The Astonishing bring the group down a bit (in more ways than WDADU/FII do for the first five, or SC/BC&SL do for the middle five).
So I'd rank them as:
Second Five
First Five
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Third Five
-Marc.