I can see how people wouldn't be able to get into the band. They are pretty unaccessible and are an acquired taste really.
It's weird because, having followed them from The Spectre Within, it's been a really wild ride. But it's almost as if they grew along similar lines to mine...and that makes them very personal.
They started of very Iron Maiden-esque (which I was really into at the time)...then No Exit had some of their heaviest material yet (which I was into at the time)...then they went a bit more for the Rush angle (which I was still pretty into at the time). The only divergence came with Parallels, which everyone else holds up as their masterpiece. Parallels came out at a time when I felt a lot of bands were "wimping out" and I was getting more into Slayer, Sepultura, Entombed...and a lot of other underground death metal. So I just wasn't digging it at all....but it did eventually grow on me. Always liked Life In Still Water and Eleventh Hour. But I was always happy that Eye To Eye never became a radio hit...because that is the stuff they would have continued to write if it had....and that really would have KILLED the band. I/O was just so/so, and I figured the band was done. But then I got a advance copy of APSOG when I was working in a CD shop and I was just so completely blown away... Everyone got so sick of me playing that CD. But I played it in store EVERY DAY for MONTHS. It was just the right album at the right time for me. I was at the peak of my prog geekiness...and it was the ultimate prog album. I didn't like Disconnected as well *at first*, but it grew on me, and right now I think that is my all-time favorite FW album.
FWX was a disappointment in my book. I really liked the ambient thing they did with Disconnected, and I really felt they should have gone more in that direction. Something For Nothing style.