Happy Sunday everyone, whilst you're enjoying my next set of songs I'll be off panic learning my lines for dress rehearsal, exercising, and doing History questions
35: Trial Of Tears I honestly think that Falling Into Infinity is subject to the same curse as Systematic Chaos; a few bad songs ruin the album for a lot of people. It’s far from being unbearable as many people seem to say, and I don’t feel it’s the bastion of commercialisation and selling out in their career, because overall it is still a very good album.
So, Trial of Tears. You hear that? You hear what’s been missing from a lot of Dream Theater albums in recent years bar A Dramatic Turn of Events? That’s right children, that’s called a bass. Considering Myung wrote the song (and he has a wonderful way with words), it’s not surprising that he wanted his own instrument to be heard, bless his little cotton socks! There are some real vocal highlights in this song, starting with ‘It’s raining deep in heaven.’, which James nails. The drums aren’t mixed too loudly, which is a criticism of some later albums in their catalogue which I sometimes admit, I have to agree with. The transitions between the different sections of the song are, as ever, perfect.
And I just heard that damn groovy bass jam. I’m a happy girl.
34: The Answer Lies Within I love the opening to this song. Maybe it’s because I’m a totally deep and dark teenager with meaningful life experiences, but I love Church bells. I also love classical piano sounds. Vocals? Soft where they need to be, they’re not ridiculously overstated in the first section. Then the acoustic guitar comes in, fitting perfectly with the keys that essentially drive the piece. Oh, and fucking violins. I fucking love violins. I do feel that the drums are mixed a tad too loud for my liking, but other than that it’s a beautiful and optimistic sounding song. The high notes that James hit have a very vulnerable quality to them, it may be because his voice wasn’t still a hundred percent, but it’s nice to hear him not blasting out the highs for once. It’s a lovely change. As for it’s placement in the album in relation to the other songs…I don’t know to be honest. Maybe it would have been better between ‘Never Enough’ and ‘Sacrificed Sons’. I mean, there is a lot of (understandable) negativity in those two songs that gets a bit heavy. But who am I to judge?
33: Innocence Faded The only reason why this song doesn’t place higher is because, being a hormonal teenage girl, I’m partial to changing my mind a lot. When I love it, I love it, but when I don’t, I don’t. I’m not sure why I go off it sometimes if I’m honest. I just do.
Maybe it’s the jarring transition between different sections at around 3:09 in. One of the things I like about Dream Theater is their knowledge of how to transition between different sections of different songs. Sometimes, the piece calls for it to be jarring…But Innocence Faded, especially the first section, doesn’t seem to have the right mood to it to have a jarring transition, its first half is very gentle and sorrowful…I think that the transition needed to be smoother…And the thing is it’s just that one! The rest of the song, the performance, the writing and production is simply sublime.
Yep. It’s definitely that transition that led to my love-hate relationship with the song.
32: Octavarium I’ve braced myself for the hate. Go on, give it.
I don’t know how I’m supposed to defend my decision here, although it is a wonderful song, I just…prefer other songs to it. I can listen to it, sing along to it, head bang in time to it when needs be, I can even imitate the solos when I feel like it, but…I can do that with nearly all of Dream Theater’s songs. But I suppose it just doesn’t have what I look for in a song personally, and I’m not sure what it is that I do look for. I guess it’s an emotional connection that makes or breaks a song for me…And an emotional connection is something I struggle to make with this song, even though I try and have done on occasion…Other songs just hit me deeper.
If it was going off of the Score Version alone though, this song would definitely be higher up. I have a thing for orchestras. And beards. But that’s for another topic.
31: Lost Not Forgotten I like horses. I also like pianos. I also like this song, a lot. Choral effects are a plus, and on the album which we introduce Mangini to the fray, and believe me, I hate to use this term…The drumming is beast. I admit, some sections of that introductory section are good for showing off but not for the actual song (a lot of the introduction could have been cut out and the song would still be as good, the rest of the song has plenty of technical proficiency to go round. So, if we cut out some of that introduction and keep the rest of the song, then I think that this song would be much higher placed on my list.
And here comes the hate for placing Lost Not Forgotten over Octavarium.
Topic: Official DT Top 50 Thread Mark II (bss4life15 up now - starting page 79) (Read 245868 times)