Yes! Agreed. It should be broad strokes, and convey the album, as opposed to a breakdown of its components. It should also be seeking what people are going to love about it, while also identifying the things people might find offputting.
Too many reviews, perhaps tellingly, consist of a reviewer waxing lyrical about why they liked it. The emphasis should really be on why you might like it, and "you" consists, theoretically, of six-billion people. I think his sentence on Beneath the Surface is more of the former, but the rest tends to be more the latter, which I was quite impressed by, as you don't get so much of it in the undermediated internet age.
I see your point, but a reviewer can't know what you will like about an album. So it's up to the reader to see through the reviewer's opinions and take from a review what they feel is relevant. I find that easier to do if I get a bit more detail about how the reviewer thinks.
All I know about Beneath the Surface is that it's apparently "guff". How does that tell me what I will think of it? It doesn't elaborate on that at all. It's just an opinion too broad to convey meaning to the reader. He could have thrown in at least one sentence about each song. The fact he's skipped over some of the most anticipated songs on the album makes it feel too brief.
I guess it's just a frustrating review, because from his summary, it's clear that he's giving a good honest opinion of the album, without a bias for or against Dream Theater like so many other reviews do, and it makes me feel he could have had more to say. It has a good intro, a good summary, but little inbetween.
Yep! Like I said, Beneath the Surface was more of the former. A very poor moment in a nifty review. And yeah, I totally get what you're saying. A good, mid-sized article would've been a lot more elucidating. I don't think you need to namecheck every song, though, no matter how hotly anticipated - I'm very fond of brevity! Not that you'd necessarily know it from reading my bile.
I do completely understand why you
do want to hear his review of Breaking All Illusions, though. I do think it's refreshing to not hear an album boiled down to its MVPs in the way that fandoms often tend to - a fan's lens is a bit like a dirty magnifying glass, inasmuch as some aspects are exaggerated while others are obscured almost completely. There's an imaginary line between "important" and "filler," that tends to be completely arbitrary. A slightly more objective reviewer doesn't need to address BAI as he's not creaming his pants about in the way everyone else is, which I find completely refreshing. I don't think the obligatory paragraph on it needs to be obligatory.
Admittedly, it doesn't hurt that
I'm not as interested in Breaking All Illusions as everyone else seems to be, so that might be a less pseudo-intellectual clue as to why I'm not bothered that he omitted it. :p
Topic: Official "A Dramatic Turn Of Events" Review Thread (Read 90346 times)
