Interestingly, I don't have much issue with the writing schedule. I agree with Bosk that we don't really know all the deets, and there could have been files back and forth, and each member could have been working on bits and bobs for months now. It's all speculation.
Where I have beef is:
- the recording
- the mindset involved
I liked, not loved, the last album, and one of the criticisms was that it was too... for lack of a better word, "flat". Jeff sang in his lower register, Billy's got that chirpy, trebly bass, and so you have five instruments all competing for the same sonic space. (Contrast that with, say, Jimmy Page, who was a MASTER at arranging the various instruments (and parts of the same instrument) in a sonic space. I'd like* to see more separation, more contrast, more dynamics in the arrangement. Mike is so good at arranging (that's not sarcastic) that it should be in their wheelhouse to do (it's evident on the Flying Colors record...) that I think the time creeps in here to limit that.
The mindset; I've long been critical - and have nothing to prove me wrong at this point - of the "I'm in 87 bands!" thing from a creative perspective. I get it, it's "Mike PortnoyTM" and so there's an element now of "you get what you get" (it's like asking Eddie VH to drop a solo into your song; you can probably sing that solo unheard and be in the ballpark). One of the things that really grabbed me about DT back in the day (I bought I&W when it was released) was that it was a mix of so many good things; it was Rush and Iron Maiden jamming together with Steve Perry singing over it. The last two (with Portnoy) seemed too much like him wanting to be in Pantera (or, more specifically, to be Charlie Benante). Now, he's got his prog thing, he's got his metal thing, he's got his Deep Purple-esque thing, he's got his DT thing, he's got his Beatles-esque thing... but maybe the magic was bringing those disparate influences in. Maybe the "metal thing" needs more Ringo, or the Prog thing needs more Bill Ward. I think - I sense - that he gets into these mindsets, and that's far more limiting than any time limitation or "playing the same fill over and over" (which I don't agree).
* I fully cop that "what I like to see" is irrelevant; you're not buying Portnoy records to hear what Stadler wants, you're paying for what Mike wants to deliver because we like what he's delivered in the past.