I've just finished listening to the album all the way through.
I've used the word "balanced" before to describe ADTOE....but that was more because of the "loud bits" and "soft bits". It was either one or the other.
But this album truly achieves BALANCE. There's loud bits, soft bits AND the incredible mid-range stuff that I have loved from them from day one. Even though I have loved nearly everything DT has done (even the detour into "metal classic" with ToT) I have missed that balance that made IAW (and actually Octavarium) so special.
THIS ALBUM REALLY HAS BALANCE!
I really liked ADTOE on the first listen, and I still think there is not a single "skip" track on that entire album. It's very solid, and I put it in an upper mid tier or lower top tier album, because there's no low points on the album...it's just really steady. But it also really lacks in those *MIND BLOWN* moments. (to me, anyway) There are very few moments where I go "OH...NO...THEY...DIAN'T!!"
Well, I can safely say that DT12 achieved that. I can't tell you how many times my wife started laughing because I'm sitting next to her with headphones on laughing like a schoolboy and yelling "OH...NO...THEY...DIAN'T!!!"
The Looking Glass and Behind the Veil were BIGTIME standouts to me. Illumination Theory is going to take awhile to digest...but it is the most enjoyable epic I've heard in a long time. Octavarium was PERFECT, ITPOE was a huge let down (worst DT epic IMO), and CoT was much better. But I seriously thought I was done with DT trying to do epics. I figured they had just delivered the goods on Octavarium, and that was it. But with IT, they may have proved me wrong.
Overall...AMAZING album. Need a few more spins to set in.