To be more precise, it's that modern metal sound they've been doing since literally Systematic Chaos that I'm talking about. The last 6 albums vary from each other in that regard, the band still obviously have a diverse pallette even in the Mangini era, but I'd call them all more metal albums than the first 8 (sans ToT, but that album is also a different kind of metal, just like WDaDU is often 80s hair metal meets Rush)
But... that's an arbitrary distinction imo because I don't think one can really say that Fall Into the Light and On the Backs of Angels are any more modern in style than The Glass Prison or Home. Systematic Chaos wasn't really new in that regard, because I wouldn't say that The Dark Eternal Night is a million miles away from This Dying Soul or In the Name of God either. Is ToT really a "different kind of metal"? At that point, you might as well say D/T is a different kind of metal from ADToE and DT12, because it's just as technically justifiable. The opening riff of This Dying Soul wouldn't be out of place on Distance Over Time after all, as there's already a pretty similar riff in At Wit's End. Also... no, The Astonishing isn't more metal than Awake, WDaDU or SfaM. You'd have to do a lot of semantic gymnastics to make that claim work, to say the least. I'm also sure the people who dismiss it for its relative lack of metal would be happy to learn that it's more metal than the first six albums.
IaW is metallic progressive music with production values reflecting the time it was recorded.
Awake is heavier and more metal than previous album, but there is tons of lighter (and jazzier!) moments, and still metallic progressive music.
"Metallic progressive music"
If only there was a word for this...FII is lighter again, more than IaW, but now has really good, timeless production values (though I like IaW's production)
SFAM is heavier again, but no more metal than Awake. Production is 'meh' but not bad for JP and MP's first time.
SDoIT is not really any heavier than SFAM, except TGP. Production is pretty good again.
ToT is heaviness cranked up, an album of Glass Prisons, essentially, pushing the nu metal + thrash sound. Production is perfect for what they did here.
So, possibly controversial opinion here (less to rebut and more to just offer my own perspective on this, having spent 4 years studying mixing in a fair amount of detail, though would by no means call myself an expert):
Am I the only one who doesn't get the appeal of Kevin Shirley's mixes? The three factors that I feel identify them are mud, compression and a certain
flatness. I think they sound fine in mellower moments like Hollow Years (even if I think James' vocals sound way too muffled on the album as a whole) and the first few minutes of Blind Faith. However, MP's snare at its loudest tends to be like half-way towards the kind of nauseating ringing (admittedly somewhat of a contemporary staple in a lot of alt rock / nu metal / alt metal at the time, possibly in part because that was when the loudness war really started kicking in, but I could be wrong) that defines the St Anger snare and the kick is compressed to the point of clipping in all of these. Today, I put Six Degrees up against the Apple Music master of Distance Over Time and... the latter
smoked the former. Far more space and clarity, no clipping and a real sense of weight and punchiness. It was like going from two dimensions to three. Even Images and Words, despite its dated qualities, really benefits from the extra dynamics, separation and ambience that might put it over any Shirley mix imo.
From here forward, the heaviness or metal element is the dominant sound, always present, it's a matter of degree. The production values reflect that as well, sounding like the band wants to stay current with other heavy music, but there are also some very mixed and questionable production choices as well.
While I agree with this in a vacuum, I feel like it again ignores just how metallic the early albums were as well. I've seen you bring up how moments like DO's initial chord makes the album pretty much an album that has metal as its dominant force... the
exact same thing could be said of the first three albums. John Petrucci's tone on I&W and Awake was extremely...
Metallica. It's that hyper aggressive, crunching scoop that then warmed to a much more rockish tone with more prominent mids by the time of FII. Put a power chord of the former with MP's very sharp, cutting kick sound in either of the former albums and you've got yourself some metal... if we're going by your own standards and not just acknowledging this for modern metal. I will grant that Shirley's, as well as Michael Brauer's, sound does indeed imply a more
rock feeling. If Six Degrees or Train of Thought was mixed by Ben Grosse or Andy Sneap, I suspect that your impression wouldn't be the same.
While I find some of the album to be calling back to former glories like IaW and other 90s DT elements, it's both the least formulaic "normal" DT album in the Mangini era.
I also have to really question how it's the "least formulaic", how that even goes about being defined as well as how DT12 and D/T are any more formulaic. Is it because the songs are shorter and map on a bit more reliably to more typical song structures? It wouldn't really entirely true though, because stuff like The Bigger Picture, At Wit's End and Barstool Warrior start with relatively traditional structures which they then defy in their second half, Surrender to Reason and S2N are all over the place despite having choruses and Illumination Theory and Pale Blue Dot have the more "song" elements being less important than the general flow of the track, despite being present. If it's the kind of tracks on offer, then idk how having two instrumentals, with one being a symphonic introduction to the album, is an adherence to a common formula for the band. I could go on for quite a while about how a lot of these tracks don't really map onto what might be thought of as generic / formulaic territory, but I'd imagine this tangent is already going a bit far.
I wouldn't argue that much with ADToE having very smooth pacing, though I wouldn't say that it's to the detriment of DT12 or D/T either. The latter has a shorter length to compensate for its consistently higher level of intensity and the former tends to be a lot more dramatic and sudden with its dynamic shifts, but that doesn't make the pacing inherently bad. The shifts still seem appropriately to help the listener breathe. I'd imagine this would probably come off better with the Apple Music version of the mix that's less compressed, however. I would say that pacing is generally one of the band's greatest strengths, last 3 albums very much included. Hell, why praise of it is at the detriment of other albums in this context, I'm not really sure.
Regardless, we should probably drop this now. I will admit it's getting kind of tiring to argue this and it seems to have been a good few pages since this thread has resembled the topic.