I think the Nick-Era is pretty solid over-all, but given they had such huge shoes to fill, it was always going to be difficult to follow-up albums like V and Snow. Feel Euphoria is a good effort, but I think it's a bit all over the place. Octane definitely stepped it up a bit, and the opening suite is some of the best Post-Neal material out there. I think they were wise enough to make a shorter album with bonus tracks, but even then, those bonus tracks were just as good, if not better than the back half of the main album. The self-titled release is definitely the album that should have had some trimming done to it and been given the bonus-disc treatment. It suffered from having a lot of slower songs in the middle and it dragged the pacing down a lot, and the "traditional" multi-part epic at the end is probably the weakest one from the four Nick-Era albums. When X came out, I was really impressed and surprised, and to this day, I'd say it's probably my favorite Nick-Era album, with a return to some sprawling epics and longer songs with strong instrumental sections. It's probably as close to classic SB as that line-up would get, but unfortunately, it was also the last album with Nick, and it seemed like all the steam they had built up to that point was let out and the band was doomed.
Enter - Ted Leonard - and BNADS, which, while a bit from perfect, was a STRONG entrance for Ted. The main album has some great moments and songs, and even the bonus tracks are worth listening to! Over-all, probably my favorite of the three Ted albums, but Noise Floor would not be too far behind it, and The Oblivion Particle a bit further back. As a whole, these three albums aren't bad, and I can kind of hear a return of the kind of writing that the band was known for with Neal. Not sure if that was a conscious effort, or if Ted's entrance into the band kind of led them in those directions, but this line-up definitely seems like a fair melding of everything that came before, but with Ted's fresh input, which, thankfully, is different enough from his other band, Enchant.
-Marc.