I want to go back on why I dislike the Awake album and don't understand the love it gets. To me, I&W is DT's best album, because all of the songs have a definite memorable quality that makes all the songs distinct. I can hear a single second of any of the songs and immediately pinpoint which song it is. Even with songs that are constantly changing and that involve a million riffs and solos, I feel like all the songs on I&W have a strong continuity, where every melody is perfectly logical for its place in the song, and every melody fits in with the preceding melody.
Awake, to my ears, sounds like a lot of generic heavy metal riffs thrown together haphazardly. Some of the riffs are good, but it doesn't change the fact that, in my opinion, the melodies on Awake just don't flow together. Every moment on that album has an intangible quality of just... blandness, and blandness that doesn't fit with the blandness that preceded it. It just doesn't click with me.
Now, Awake isn't a bad album, by any means, and every song has at least something likeable about it, but the point I'm trying to make is, according to my ears, the riffs feel thrown together, unlike the perfectly constructed I&W, and many of the melodies seem subpar, while the I&W melodies were all sublime.