The Great Misdirect..
Mirrors-Interesting opening. Starts off pretty mellow, and it literally has my eyes hiding behind the couch waiting for the impending onslaught, but at 1:42, it gets The Love Boat theme instead.
Obfuscation-Nice opening lick, and here come the vocals..Love where this goes at 1:01. You can just hear the amazing musicianship underneath. These are not good vocals. Interesting change of pace at 2:31. I wish they explored this longer than they do. Oh, it does come back though a minute and a half later. And there it goes... This song goes up and down. Love the bass at 5:05. Sounds like Rush here for a bit, or maybe New Millenium. 7:33..such goodness!
I like this song a lot. I would love it if it weren't for the vocals.
Disease, Injury, Madness-I hate this opening. The music is fucking incredible but geez. Wow a mellow part. I didn't need it to get this mellow, I just wanted the "singing" to stop. Some clean vocals. Like Opeth, why do the cleans have to be so bland? The female? singing in between the vocal lines is a nice touch. OK, the cleans do improve the second time through. I'm trying to place the acoustic at 4:28. Rush again? DT? From 6:35 until the harsh vocals near the end is fucking class!
Again, great tune except for the harsh vocals. I know I keep saying that, but it's true.
Fossil Genera-OK, these first two minutes. Not sure how I really feel about it. Feels like it's going to set up the inevitable suckfest of heavy harsh vocals. That little bit from 2:01-2:05 is really cool. Other than the cool bit from 4:10 -4:25, the next few minutes are largely skippable.
I love the groove under the vocals at 7:20. Another mellow section and very nice outro on this.
Desert Of A Song-Other than the very nice solo at 4:03, I really don't have anything to say about this. It's just kind of there and pretty bland.
Swim To The Moon- The intro after the percussion reminds me a bit of ITPOE for a little. Really DTish, and I love it! The entire two and a half minute intro is excellent.
Typical harsh vocal section to start the main part of the song. At 4:40, I wish they could've incorporated more melodic clean vocals like this part in other parts of the album.
Ooh drum solo!
The whole musical part from 10:00 to about 14:30 is excellent. Tough part that follows it though. Another excellent outro.
So..I can see how Colors and The Great Misdirect really set themselves apart from the first three albums. They just sound cleaner, and by that I mean that there's a smoothness to it, even in some of the heavier parts. These guys are great musicians, and they make it sound like it's easy for them. They can do pretty much anything, and often do, in a single track.
But..they seem to start off each song with an almost unlistenable vocal part, and then offset it by a nice melodic mellow part. and then back and forth again. Not calling it a formula, but it does seem a bit predictable. Still, the music and the playing while executing these parts is top notch.
Not sure if I prefer Colors or TGM, but without listening to both again, I'll stick with Colors, but it's very close.
Colors
The Great Misdirect
BTBAM
Alaska
The Silent Circus