My controversial opinion for today is... well, Liquid Tension Experiment not only brought Jordan in the band, but also brought the attitude and the purpouse behind that project - compose and record on the fly - and this shows up especially during the solo sections of the songs, and it's not always a good thing.
DT always had crazy instrumental sections, but I feel that they always were fitting to the songs in the earlier albums. Let's sit around fake-playing Metropolis: one sings, another one makes guitar noises with his mouth, another one "drums" with chinese food sticks etc... I'm confident I could hum along my way through the *entire* solo section of that song, as long as it is. Play me a random solo section of any of the latter albums, especially the latest ones with Portnoy, and I seriously doubt I could recognize it on the fly, I think I could spend 30 seconds or even a minute without being able to say "Wait, it's this song".
And this because, IMHO of course, when it comes to write a solo section most of the times they don't come up with something fitting the mood of the song, but rather they turn the LTE light on, jam jam jam, riff riff riff, write write write and whatever comes up ends up being the solo section of the song. Take Endless Sacrifice for example, what's the point and purpouse of having a comedy circus break in the middle of a song about long distant relationships? it feels so random, and takes away from the mood of the song. When I hear Metropolis I'm immersed for 10 minutes in the atmosphere of Metropolis; when I hear The Ministry of Lost Souls I hear a slow melanchonic piece, then I feel thrown into an LTE jam session, and after 5 minutes I don't remember at all they suddenly go "ah, wait, we were singing about someone drowning or whatever".
This has improved in the two Mangini albums, and I hope the next record won't have many of these "Nevermind this song, enjoy this 4 minute jam that we came up the day we were recording the song" moments. And lucky the ones who enjoy them anyway, I'd add