Disappointed to see Sykes drop out, mostly because I like his work and would like to hear more of it. What I was looking forward to was seeing what Portnoy was going to play, because Sykes tends to write music that works better with a hard hitting drummer working grooves-which is why Carmine Appice was PERFECT for Blue Murder-and I'd be interested in hearing MP play that way.
I also have to admit that I'd like to see MP occasionally exercise some patience. Unless it was creative and/or personal differences that killed this, if it WAS an issue of timing, it wouldn't have hurt for MP to say "okay, we'll try this again when our schedules mesh." Not "oh, you can't do it now, okay, we'll just replace you and bang these songs out in five minutes!" MP seems to have gotten overly fond of the "write everything in the studio in a week" method, and I think it doesn't always work for every musician. There's some speculation there, I know, but it'd be nice to see MP do something where the music got a chance to breathe before being tracked.