I'm the sort of person who finds basically anything done by DT to be "good" or better, and this album is no exception. Definitely some great moments.
That said, when you stack it up against:
-the rest of DT's career
-all the discographies of bands that went on to make DT-style music
-re-recorded versions of the same songs with a better singer
I don't often find myself wanting to get this album out, when there's so much other progressive metal to choose from.
That said, I don't think there's an album where we really get to see DT so unbridled as they are here, at least instrumentally. Kevin Moore is out in full force both musically and lyrically, Myung's bass is everywhere, and of course Portnoy and Petrucci make their mark here. Myung would take a more subdued role on the next album, and the keyboards would gradually decline in intensity, at least until Rudess came around, and even Rudess never really carried full songs like Moore did back in the day (largely because Moore did lyrics).
There are some obvious flaws on this album. The vocals just don't work, for one. The main problem I have with Dominici is that he has this tendency to cut syllables off before any other singer would, and the lack of reverb on his voice only kind of furthers that problem. So do some of the weird hyper-syllabic lyrical phrasings, most obviously on OAMOT. In fact, when Dominici himself wrote the lyrics (Afterlife, for example), I feel like his voice does just fine.
Beyond Charlie, there's the obvious poor production and the occasional songwriting gaffe--while I love LFAGA, I always wince at that transition into the chorus, where it sounds like they just pasted two songs together, for example. There's also a distinct lack of epics--TKH gets there, but a lot of the music sounds so much more straight-ahead than what DT would later make--AFIL, for example. And that's not necessarily a bad thing--none of the songs really fall flat--but it does make them sort of run together. Occasionally, a song like Afterlife calls for some attention with a nice hook and the epic unison, but songs like SS and OAMOT, while pleasant, never really have much that grabs me like most of the rest of DT's catalog does.
Thankfully enough, we have bootlegs of the majority of these songs from LaBrie's 92-94 prime, which correct most of the flaws and really show how great the ideas behind them were.
I'll give it a solid 4/5. It and FII are DTs worst, IMO, by a fair bit, but none of the band's music falls short of enjoyable. If it weren't overshadowed by so much else, I'd love to give this one more spins.
Topic: Obligatory Pre-Release Discography Recap: WDaDU (Read 4896 times)
