Warning: rant ahead. Decided to put on DT12 yesterday, and it still doesn't excite me like other DT albums do. I know all the tunes at this point, I've warmed up to the first few tracks, but the rest is just OK or samey, but decent metal tunes. I really don't like the closing epic, it's not well put together, but it has a lot of cool parts. It's a heavy riffy song that has these two sections of music in the middle that do not belong, with a nice secret ending which should have been longer. It is a big red flag that Portnoy was the master arranger in the music. Even now with DOT, and I like the new album, there are still these moments of technicality for the sake of it, or crazy time signatures everywhere, without regard to how it affects the flow of the song. Same with ADTOE which I also enjoy. It's why I don't think Planet X is super amazing, at least a full album of them, it's all head music with a dash of jazz thrown in. I still also hear moments in DOT where it's like "oh that's a thing they do now" whether it's chord progression choices, or whatnot.
It has nothing to do with 'influences on their sleeves' as we still get that during the Mangini era. I think MP was the filter and arranger, and I still think nothing released since BC&SL is "great". All IMO of course. There's been some good tunes for sure, but I think I still would have been fine with a 5-6 year break instead of getting the last 4 albums, even as I still am in the honeymoon phase of the new album. Imagine the band came back last year with all the ideas they came up with over the past 9 years (all the raw material from ADTOE-DT12-TA-DOT mixed with ideas MP would have, and I don't think he'd be as much about bringing in extreme metal or U2 influences at this point) to make a massive album that would probably have competed with I&W or Six Degrees but with MP on drums. I think the one individual album would be better than the combined forces of the last 4 albums.
The thing with Mangini is he's a tech-metal drummer whereas MP is a prog-rock/metal drummer who had more creative control over the music than just about any other drummer I can think of, and I think that changes a lot of aspects of Dream Theater that I always thought were more unique to the band than other bands out there, prog, rock, metal, or otherwise. Losing Kevin Moore was tough on the band's sound, because he had a styles you don't find in keyboardists post-early 90s, but early Rudess was great. I think after 8vm they just all went through the motions, though. That, and trying to be 'current' messed up their sound. I would have rather the band totally reinvent their sound instead of pushing for the modern metal sound they went for on SC, or the "return to roots" style of the last few albums, which I don't think is accurate anyway as the music now is darker, more brooding. Sure they've brought in lighter, more melodic, major key stuff back on recent albums, but at best it reminds me of that kind of stuff from Six Degrees, not I&W or Awake. But I want the band to be progressive. They don't have to reinvent the wheel or anything, but the last few albums seem"regressive" or just a mix-and-match of what they had been doing with Portnoy on the last couple of albums with him. The Astonishing wasn't this, we can talk further on that if you want. Anyway, I ranted too long, no time to edit.