DM is pretty consistent in terms of good vs bad songs, but it needed a lot of work for most of those songs to be good from start to finish.
The problem is that the songs are mostly very artificially inflated in a contrived attempt to emulate the structures of MoP/AJFA, and in the process it highlights that Kirk and Lars simply cannot play that style of music anymore. Those instrumental sections feel like they're a hair away from falling apart entirely, and it's pretty embarrassing they couldn't do better in a studio environment.
Kirk doesn't manage a single passable solo on the album. He's out of time, and can't play that style of music. He sounds like a 15 year old bedroom shredder trying to play his old solos.
Had they trimmed the songs down, and perhaps written a couple of stronger songs to replace the duds, they could have had a great album, but still no competition for the first 5 albums. If they give up trying to recapture the past on the next album, I think they still have a great album left in them.
Load and Reload are wildly inconsistent albums, ranging from some of their best songs to absolute filler crap, but I would still take either album over DM any day.