Warning! This is some heavy stuff
Copying from posts I have made in another thread on another forum:
This reminds me of the time I told my Dream Theater-loving friend that Awake is overblown, overlong, brooding piece of sh*t, pompous even for DT standards, full of boy-bandish choruses (Innocence Faded, Caught in a Web) and half-assed ballads (The Silent Man, Lifting Shadows Off a Dream) and that Moore creepiness in the end that really even
sounds to me like watching a stalker masturbate. Poor guy seemed to have something like a heart attack.
I have since come to like the album quite a lot, but the friendship never quite recovered.
And then:
I don't know what it is that makes
Awake of all things the sacred cow of Dream Theater albums, while most people completely overlook Falling into Infinity or When Dreams and Day Unite.
Like I said, I have come to like the album a lot, but some of my previous criticisms still stand (the ballads are really so-so and - for example - Hollow Years' so much better I can't even) and overall it still sounds to me like a very incoherent and inconsistent album. And Space-Dye Vest has no business being there at all, IMHO.
It's funny how everyone dislikes audio clips in latter part of DT's career, yet they don't mind it here, for example.
And The Mirror/Lie is Dream Theater's Acacia Avenue - a song I could hear another 100 000 times and I still wouldn't remember how it goes.
Plus the album's definitely overlong - the much longer FII or SC seem to me much shorter, subjectively. When the second half of the record comes around, I just feel like it's a very long ride.
As far as I'm concerned, I nowadays go crazy about Scarred, Caught in a Web and mostly all of AMBI, cheesy as The Silent Man is. I have also developed a weak spot for Innocence Faded, since it's my wife's favourite early DT song.
But I don't get what makes this the masterpiece to end all masterpieces. Honestly, no trolling here.
Like I said, this is some heavy stuff.