I never got the 'Raw Dog feels like a bunch of riffs slapped together' argument. I guess compositionally it kinda is, considering how abrupt the transitions are, but the emotional through-lines are all still there.
Intro, goes on for a while, you feel like it's time to stop introing and get to rocking
Kick into the riff with the strings and lead guitar, which kinda rocks, this doesn't build up too radically, so you can't transition into something too different
Guitar lead and bassline with a similar feel to the melody before it kick in, we stay with this for a while, because of this your next transition has to be far more different feeling, and the transition implies as much
Very intense feeling lead guitar then lead keyboard line to transition into solos, starting with a more melodic guitar solo for contrast
Riffs underlying the solos get slightly darker over the course of the section, solos get increasingly more twisted, ending with a weird but farmoreeffectivethaninariteofpassage Bebot solo that ends with a weirdly majestic feeling resolve which kicks us into
The big melodic and epic unison section, which brings together all the emotional intensity of the solos and keeps building it as the drums get faster, and then doesn't quite resolve that tension and instead lets it bleed out by going to the darker keyboard arpeggio type section, at that point, you want to hear something that isn't so crazy
So BAM, back to the riff the song started with, which kicks into a double bass driven descent into the end of the song. Oddly, this is the part of the song I find myself most emotionally responding to but don't really know how to explain. I always think of it as armies marching into some kind of inevitable and hopeless battle with one another, but I don't really know how that works in the context of the song. It's a shame they didn't stick a fadeout onto the end. That would have been a great ending.
Inevitably, someone will say "well, if you overthink something enough, of course it will make sense." But I can remember the first time I heard it quite distinctly, and I followed all the transitions and got basically the same feeling from them that I do now. More elaborately? Yes, which always happens when you get more familiar with a song. But I didn't teach myself to like it for god knows what reason. There are many, many DT songs that feel more like riffs thrown together than this one.
Also, generic metal? Really? How generic is the bassline before the big solo section? How obviously are the solos Petrucci and Rudess? The unison after the solos is such a distinct DT trope. The keyboard breakdown after the unison is so obviously Rudess. The outro is unlike anything I've heard before. Maybe the intro's generic (it's the same riff as the outro, but instead of going into the rolling double bass Petrucci fills in the notes with muted notes), but it's still cool sounding and works in the context of the song, even though admittedly it's my least favorite part.
Or maybe I'm just hearing it all wrong.
Topic: I Listened to Raw Dog Again (Read 10274 times)
