The Best of Times has some pretty fast and energetic riffs in it as well. The style alludes more to Hard Rock than Metal, but when it comes to ballads getting heavier and more epic, DT has always done things like that. Look at To Live Forever and The Spirit Carries On. They both start out mellow, but then build into something big and powerful, and I think AFTR fits perfectly well into that category.
The Best of Times is certainly energetic, but it's never at any point what I would call heavy. What I would say for The Spirit Carries On is that it definitely does start out mellow and become bigger and more powerful, and I agree that Along for the Ride fits into that category. However, SFAM is not a heavy album all the way through that relies on TSCO as its sole break. It already has Regression, Through My Words, Through Her Eyes and One Last Time to provide dynamics. But on DT12, AFTR is pretty much it in terms of an opportunity for a break, and it really doesn't provide one. Meanwhile TSCO was never intended as a break. It's intended as a climax.
I say, this by the way, while probably liking Along for the Ride better than a majority of people on this forum do. I would probably rank it third on the album behind The Bigger Picture and Illumination Theory.
Regarding this, I look at it in a completely different way. DT usually has a habit of ending their albums with an epic, be it around 13 minutes, or anywhere up to 25. Songs like Trial of Tears, ITNOG and Learning To Live apply to this category, but then, so do songs like Octavarium, In The Presence of Enemies and The Count of Tuscany. In DT12, Illumination Theory is that song, and even though it's 22 minutes, part of that is the Easter Egg, so the main component of the song itself is around 19 minutes, which is pretty much the same as TCOT.
I get this, but I'm going to counter it by saying this: All the albums that end with an epic have another epic song on the album.
Falling Into Infinity has Lines in the Sand in addition to Trial of Tears.
Train of Thought has a lot of epic songs in addition to In the Name of God; I would say Endless Sacrifice is the most epic.
Images and Words has Metropolis, which is less than ten minutes but still epic in style and scope.
Octavarium has Sacrificed Sons on top of the title track,
Systematic Chaos has The Ministry of Lost Souls on top of ITPOE and
Black Clouds & Silver Linings has A Nightmare to Remember. We could say, actually, for every album after WDADU, that it has two epics.
Awake has Voices and Scarred,
Scenes has Beyond This Life and Home, and
Dramatic Turn has Outcry and Breaking All Illusions.
DT12 doesn't has these; it just has 8 short songs and the one epic. To me that's a bit of a strange anomaly, and one that make the album, to me personally, feel a bit less representative of the DT sound.
As for mini-epics I think it's more about the musical journey than about song length
I agree to an extent, which is why I would enumerate Metropolis and Voices (and maybe The Killing Hand? it's borderline) among the mini-epics despite the fact that these fall short of the 10-minute mark.
and DT12 may not have really long songs, but its 'epicness' is condensed in a big way, and still manages to take you through that musical journey and deliver songs that are as progressive as anything they've ever done.
Hmm. I think I have to disagree. Illumination Theory is one of their proggiest songs ever, but I don't think I could say that the rest of the disc is up to the usual DT standard for progginess. Maybe Behind the Veil and to a lesser degree Surrender to Reason, but I think if you compare it to, say, ADTOE, ADTOE is easily proggier.
Personally, I'd say Surrender to Reason at 6.5 minutes in itself is more of an epic than A Nightmare To Remember.
Umm... No.
I couldn't disagree more. Even taking into account the production and compression issues that the guitar tones face throughout the album, in no way does DT12 come close to the consistent heaviness and trashiness of an album like TOT. There's Vacant, sure, but that's one streak of white in a portrait painted black. I'm not denying that DT12 is a relatively heavy album, but I think we're forgetting that this is Dream Theater, one of the forerunners to the progressive metal genre. My point being that it's not as heavy as other DT albums and that it showcases a wide array of sounds even given the supposed limits to that genre label.
I'll agree with the bolded part but not with the underlined part. I think
Train of Thought is the only one I could even get the argument for being heavier than DT12. I'll agree that
Train of Thought is the darker of the two albums, but in terms of sheer heaviness the two are close together. But ToT has a greater sense of dynamics in the production, which leads to some non-heavy parts like Vacant or the middle of In the Name of God, while DT12 feels more cramped to me. In fact, I think that's what it is. DT12 feels too cramped to me. The music does not at any point ever breathe, while ToT is far roomier even while being heavy all the way through (and fairly compressed in terms of mastering as well).
While the mixing and mastering is most certainly a factor in how heavy an album may come across, it really doesn't come into play nearly as much as the actual song-writing and instrumentation do in delivering a particular mood that the band tries to convey.
Hmm. Perhaps. I think I can agree with the statement that ToT is heavier than DT12, with the caveat that it's far easier for me to listen to ToT because it sounds roomier while DT12 sounds cramped.
Again, I do acknowledge the varied moods and levels of intensity presented by BC&SL--it most certainly lives up to its name in presenting the light and shade that DT has to offer, but in the end I just feel that DT12 achieves the same exact thing but more thoroughly and with packing a bigger punch.
I think DT12 is actually not all that diverse in mood or intensity level. There's some diversity in the first few songs, but the second half of the album is all that same mood of being strong in the face of adversity. TBP, BTV, STR, AFTR, IT are both musically and lyrically of a similar mood to each other. I'll give the album credit for finding some different moods in TEI, TLG and EM, but I don't think there's as much diversity as on BCSL, where just about no song shares the same mood as another (I think there's some similarity between AROP and early TCOT, but aside from that...). There's also tons of variety within individual songs on BCSL—ANTR, TCOT, TBOT and TSF all have that kind of thing.
I like DT12, I really do, but I'm not in love with it, and I have trouble with it sometimes. While I always think that the songs of BCSL or ToT or FII or, of course, IAW are all very good, I have trouble listening to DT12 that often and regularly get frustrated with it. Even while liking it. I think I'm also frustrated that I don't feel the same way about it as some people do, especially since it was the first DT album whose release I awaited. But that's just the way it is for me with this one, unfortunately.
Now just to rock the boat:
Six Degrees was the last fully amazing album they've done. Everything since then has been good in sections at best and boring at worst.
Six Degrees is quite possibly the weakest album they've done, and probably only tops SC.