Your Controversial Opinions on DT

[Onno]

I have always thought it was incredible that You not me gets so much hate. I think it´s one of the best songs on FII and easily better than songs like Ytse jam, Blind faith, Just let me breathe, Dance of Eternity, The count of Tuscany and especially better than the demo version You or me.

You Not Me is a better song than any song on BC&SL, save Wither.

Yeah, go ahead, rape me, or whatever.

You're dead.

[wasteland]

You Not Me is better than The Count? Explain.

[?]

You Not Me is better than Blind Faith and The Count? Explain.

[wasteland]

You Not Me is better than Blind Faith and The Count? Explain.

Yes, of course. And also, how can it be better than the demo?

[aprilethereal]

Misunderstood and Blind Faith are BY FAR the weakest songs from SDOIT.

Misunderstood is a bottom 20 DT song.

Kill me.

[BlobVanDam]

No weak songs on WDADU? How can anyone say that with a straight face? The best of WDADU doesn't even come close to the worst from SDOIT.
My controversial opinion is that WDADU should never have been released. It's an embarrassing album, especially when IaW could have made one of the best debut albums of all time.

Do you mean that they should have held those songs back instead of releasing them? Because there is no way in hell that they could have written IAW without the musical growth that they experienced in the WDADU era!

They should have just been like the Majesty demos, and not recorded for a proper studio album. Obviously you aren't born writing Metropolises, but that doesn't mean you have to release everything along the way while you learn. So yes, they should have held them back.

And being the first album is no excuse. A lot of bands release excellent albums for their first release. As they say, you have all the time in the world to write your first album. So many bands have released debut albums universally considered great, and DT's debut isn't even highly regarded among their own fanbase.
Then only a few years later they manage IaW, which is universally loved among the fans. What a huge difference those few years made!

[Tomislav95]

Come on, WDADU is not that bad. It's not fantastic album but IMO there is no bad songs.

[BlobVanDam]

Come on, WDADU is not that bad. It's not fantastic album but IMO there is no bad songs.

Status Seeker, Light Fuse and Get Away, The Ones Who Help to Set the Sun and Only a Matter of Time are DT's absolute worst songs imo. Completely amateurish. The rest range from passable to good. I would not consider anything from that album close to great though. I'd say it is that bad.

[Tomislav95]

Come on, WDADU is not that bad. It's not fantastic album but IMO there is no bad songs.

Status Seeker, Light Fuse and Get Away, The Ones Who Help to Set the Sun and Only a Matter of Time are DT's absolute worst songs imo. Completely amateurish. The rest range from passable to good. I would not consider anything from that album close to great though. I'd say it is that bad.

Then I guess my opinion about WDADU is controversial

[?]

Come on, WDADU is not that bad. It's not fantastic album but IMO there is no bad songs.

I've been here for 3½ years and he has always disliked WDADU and the last few songs on Awake, so don't expect him to change his mind anytime soon!

[BlobVanDam]

Come on, WDADU is not that bad. It's not fantastic album but IMO there is no bad songs.

Status Seeker, Light Fuse and Get Away, The Ones Who Help to Set the Sun and Only a Matter of Time are DT's absolute worst songs imo. Completely amateurish. The rest range from passable to good. I would not consider anything from that album close to great though. I'd say it is that bad.

Then I guess my opinion about WDADU is controversial

We're in the controversial opinion thread, so that's what we're here for! Which is why I'm feeling a bit more open to being a bit more brutally honest about how I feel about the album. I don't think there's anything controversial about liking or disliking the album, but I think we're both comparing the extremes here, so some controversy from both ends perhaps?

[wasteland]

You should also consider that IAW would have hardly received an equivalent production / eingineering had the band come without the relative success that WDADU had been in 1989.

[BlobVanDam]

You should also consider that IAW would have hardly received an equivalent production / eingineering had the band come without the relative success that WDADU had been in 1989.

I'd like to know by which relative measurement that WDADU was considered a success. How many copies did that sell before IaW was released?
Maybe having those recordings helped them secure the opportunity to record the IaW demos and get their record contract, but I'm not convinced they couldn't have done so otherwise either.

[King Postwhore]

Why I have a hard time listening to WDADU is Charlie's vocals.  I can't get buy it.

[Tomislav95]

True, nothing is controversial here

-TMOSL is great
-Status Seeker is catchy and good song
-song SDOIT is overrated
-Honor thy Father is great
-Repentance doesn't get praise it deserves

[?]

For those who are too lazy to check the first pages of this thread, here's a bunch of my controversial opinions:

-Octavarium and Six Degrees are the most overrated DT songs, I even have trouble calling the latter a song
-WDADU > Degrees-BC&SL era albums and FII
-ADTOE > Scenes
-The Ones Who Help to Set the Sun is one of the best DT songs ever
-Forsaken is actually good and probably the best song on SC
-Honor Thy Father is a good song
-Burning My Soul isn't half as bad as people say it is, it beats Anna Lee and New Millennium easily

A few more to my list:
-I find TSCO pretty overrated and cheesy
-Musically Disappear isn't that sad, only the piano intro is notably dark IMO
-I dislike Where Are You Now? with a passion, I'd rather listen to You Not Me, Never Enough or Prophets of War than that song (and that says something!)
-Status Seeker is great
-The Best of Times is too long and boring and the solo is overrated

Ok, maybe I wouldn't talk about TSCO that way nowadays, but I'm still surprised it's so popular, because I can't see what's so special about it. And I'm not saying Disappear isn't sad at all, but I've heard loads of darker and more melancholic songs, even by DT themselves.

[farizfariz]

May i join ?

• BC&SL is the worst album that DT has been done. I mean, come on, blast beat ?
• Derek Sherinian is better than JR.
• Thank God MP is not DT member anymore, they literally need some refreshing on drum parts.
• DT Should've brought "Repentance" as their single.
• I&W is a good album, SCFAM is by far for me is the best album, too bad the story concept is just....corny somehow.
• I personally don't like Overture 1928.
• DT is not capable enough of making some touching song, except Repentance. TSCO ? No, not really that meaningful.
• Most of the songs from ADToE have a lot of epic instrumental section, even more epic than their previous album.

That's my tiny bits.

[The King in Crimson]

TCoT has a couple of cool parts but it's overall pretty terrible. It's basically a microcosm of BC&SL.

[KevShmev]

No weak songs on WDADU? How can anyone say that with a straight face? The best of WDADU doesn't even come close to the worst from SDOIT.
My controversial opinion is that WDADU should never have been released. It's an embarrassing album, especially when IaW could have made one of the best debut albums of all time.

Do you mean that they should have held those songs back instead of releasing them? Because there is no way in hell that they could have written IAW without the musical growth that they experienced in the WDADU era!

Exactly.  It's not like a chef makes a perfect meal on his first try out; sometimes you have to break a few eggs first.  And doing so enables you to grow and get more confident and do better the next time.

[BlobVanDam]

No weak songs on WDADU? How can anyone say that with a straight face? The best of WDADU doesn't even come close to the worst from SDOIT.
My controversial opinion is that WDADU should never have been released. It's an embarrassing album, especially when IaW could have made one of the best debut albums of all time.

Do you mean that they should have held those songs back instead of releasing them? Because there is no way in hell that they could have written IAW without the musical growth that they experienced in the WDADU era!

Exactly.  It's not like a chef makes a perfect meal on his first try out; sometimes you have to break a few eggs first.  And doing so enables you to grow and get more confident and do better the next time.

But a restaurant won't hire the chef who's just starting out to cook their good meals. The chef has to learn to make the meals, and then once he's good enough, he can work his way up, and only then is he good enough to cook for others.

I'm not suggesting the chef should instantly know how to cook a great meal, I'm just saying he shouldn't make strangers suffer his meals until he knows what he's doing.

[wasteland]

But a restaurant won't hire the chef who's just starting out to cook their good meals. The chef has to learn to make the meals, and then once he's good enough, he can work his way up, and only then is he good enough to cook for others.

I'm not suggesting the chef should instantly know how to cook a great meal, I'm just saying he shouldn't make strangers suffer his meals until he knows what he's doing.

Let's use a different example: should a football player train alone in his courtyard until he gets to a first league level? Or should he rather join a minor team, prove his worth, fall, get back on his feet, improve, improve, improve until the first league team sees him fit to hire him?

[BlobVanDam]

But a restaurant won't hire the chef who's just starting out to cook their good meals. The chef has to learn to make the meals, and then once he's good enough, he can work his way up, and only then is he good enough to cook for others.

I'm not suggesting the chef should instantly know how to cook a great meal, I'm just saying he shouldn't make strangers suffer his meals until he knows what he's doing.

Let's use a different example: should a football player train alone in his courtyard until he gets to a first league level? Or should he rather join a minor team, prove his worth, fall, get back on his feet, improve, improve, improve until the first league team sees him fit to hire him?

What would joining a minor team be in this analogy? Releasing an album on a small label like WDADU was?
The analogy doesn't work, because a football player can't practice a full game of football alone without teams, and his ability to improve is dependent on the skill of the players he's against/with.
That's not analogous, because DT can learn to write songs and improve without needing to release all of their stumbling blocks. They didn't release the Majesty demos as an album at the time, and yet they still got past that.
Getting WDADU released may have played a part in them getting the record contract (and maybe in getting with JLB), but releasing the album isn't what improved their songwriting skill. Just the band process of writing it is what improved their songwriting skill.

[wasteland]

Getting WDADU released may have played a part in them getting the record contract (and maybe in getting with JLB), but releasing the album isn't what improved their songwriting skill. Just the band process of writing it is what improved their songwriting skill.

That's what I meant. Without the first album released, the band would have gotten a label deal for IAW similar to that they received for WDADU, which means no real tour, no videos and marginal promotion, not to mention the flaws in the recording process and in the post-production.

Which is why I say that releasing what they felt was good material (they didn't release all the songs they had at the time, so they indeed had a choice) was a good move. As far as I remember they got good reactions from sector critics and were featured on a few magazines. This was more than enough to secure a far better deal for the making of Images And Words years later. So releasing an album that was rather well-received objectively had positive consequences on their later career, and pepared the soil for their breakthrough.

[BlobVanDam]

Getting WDADU released may have played a part in them getting the record contract (and maybe in getting with JLB), but releasing the album isn't what improved their songwriting skill. Just the band process of writing it is what improved their songwriting skill.

That's what I meant. Without the first album released, the band would have gotten a label deal for IAW similar to that they received for WDADU, which means no real tour, no videos and marginal promotion, not to mention the flaws in the recording process and in the post-production.

Which is why I say that releasing what they felt was good material (they didn't release all the songs they had at the time, so they indeed had a choice) was a good move. As far as I remember they got good reactions from sector critics and were featured on a few magazines. This was more than enough to secure a far better deal for the making of Images And Words years later. So releasing an album that was rather well-received objectively had positive consequences on their later career, and pepared the soil for their breakthrough.

We're approaching it from slightly different angles.
I'm only talking musically here that I don't think DT should have released WDADU, because I feel it's just not good enough to have deserved a release (and the hypothetical scenarios were generally speaking).

Of course historically speaking, I couldn't just hop back in my Delorean time machine and erase WDADU from memory and expect their future from then to have turned out the same. Maybe they still would have gotten the big record deal, maybe they would have even been more successful, who knows, but it wouldn't have led down the exact path that has given us DT releasing IaW as we know it in 1992, Awake in 1994, FII in 1997, etc etc (considering how nothing WDADU was though, I think they would have been just fine in one form or another though)
Our present day situation is a product of everything that came before it, so WDADU is part of what brought us to this point, but I don't believe that validates it musically as a good album.


And believe me, it pains me knowing that once I get my flux capacitor working, that I couldn't go and erase WDADU from history.

[Madman Shepherd]

Can we all just agree that releasing WDADU is more like a game of badminton?

[Dublagent66]

No more clunker ballads.  FFH & BTS on ADTOE definitely lived up to their titles.  The only two songs that kept it from being a highly consistent album.  I skip them every time.  The album ends with a whimper on BTS, not a bang.  If they want to slow things down fine, but do it within a longer more progressive song.  The stand alone ballads are getting old.  I hope they do away with them on this next album.

[aprilethereal]

No more clunker ballads.  FFH & BTS on ADTOE definitely lived up to their titles.  The only two songs that kept it from being a highly consistent album.  I skip them every time.  The album ends with a whimper on BTS, not a bang.  If they want to slow things down fine, but do it within a longer more progressive song.  The stand alone ballads are getting old.  I hope they do away with them on this next album.

I actually think BTS is one of the greatest songs on the record together with BITS and BAI.

[Onno]

I actually think BTS is one of the greatest songs on the record together with BITS and BAI.

And you are right.

[Dublagent66]

I agree with 2/3 of your post.  BITS & BAI are far better than BTS.

[aprilethereal]

Better: yes maybe
Far better: no

[Zook]

Besides the production and Charlie not being the best vocalist, there really isn't much to complain about on WDADU. I think Blob is exaggerating for effect.

[The King in Crimson]

I find BAI to be amongst the weaker songs on ADToE, well at least not as good as BITS, LNF, OtBoA and FFH.

[AngelBack]

BTS was a bit anti-climactic for a closer.  Not that a ballad can't wrap up and put a beautiful finishing touch to an album, but it has to be a "special" song.  See Rush "The Garden" for more details.

[GasparXR]

BTS was a bit anti-climactic for a closer.  Not that a ballad can't wrap up and put a beautiful finishing touch to an album, but it has to be a "special" song.  See Rush "The Garden" for more details.

I thought BTS was a great closer, and it's a nice refresher from having the epic moment be the ending to every album since SDOIT. Granted, all of those endings were awesome except maybe ITPOE pt. 2 which I felt lacked a good album ending.

[BlobVanDam]

No more clunker ballads.  FFH & BTS on ADTOE definitely lived up to their titles.  The only two songs that kept it from being a highly consistent album.  I skip them every time.  The album ends with a whimper on BTS, not a bang.  If they want to slow things down fine, but do it within a longer more progressive song.  The stand alone ballads are getting old.  I hope they do away with them on this next album.

THANK YOU. It's a fizzle ending. I don't mind FFH though. I think that one had some emotion to it, and was a nice song. Not as good as older stuff like Vacant or Disappear though.
I actually love the ballads, although I don't like their recent major key stuff from Octavarium onwards.

Besides the production and Charlie not being the best vocalist, there really isn't much to complain about on WDADU. I think Blob is exaggerating for effect.

The badness of WDADU needs no embellishment or exaggerating. There is plenty to complain about on WDADU musically speaking, from the poorly thought out vocal phrasing that's impossible to sing effectively, to the amateurish melodies that are all over the place, to the inability to arrange a song for their instruments resulting in clashing instruments that sounds like complete mud. It is amateur on every single level, and it's a stain on DT's otherwise very strong discography.
I'm not saying it's a complete lost cause, but literally half of the album is irredeemably bad, and the other half is still flawed to the point of not being really worth listening to anyway.