Here are all my thoughts. By Rob. Age 23 and a half.
First off - not sold on the cover, but I can see it growing on me. I like the minimalism, and it's very classy, but there's no new imagery. I found that a little depressing when the title was unveiled (I think the phrase I used at the time was "The title is... there is no title!!" and I find the cover art underwhelming in a similar way, but I think a bit of that is because I got my hopes up.
Fortunately, the song titles more than make up for the disappointing lack of imagery between the cover and the album title. Crikey, they're interesting. A far, far cry from the generally-quite-literal titles Dream Theater usually use. Some of them sound rather more Musey (good thing in my book) - and, gratuitous French?! Mad. This is not the tracklist I was expecting, but it's a tracklist I'm very very happy with.
I didn't expect myself to be excited by songs packed with ordinal sections, or what is clearly an over-twenty minute epic, (confirmed by the RoadRunner podcast, ladies and gents!) but here I am, genuinely galvanised. I have a good feeling about Illumination Theory. I think it's going to be a little less ItPoE and Count of Tuscany, a little more Octavarium - got a hunch it might be a top-tier epic, rather than a pseudo-epic.
That said, if I was surprised to be happy about epics, it's also fair to say I'm happy to be surprised by songs under five minutes. It's the news I never dared hope for. I think Dream Theater would make some killer four-minuters. I really dig that concise, laser-focused approach to songwriting, and I cannot wait to hear DT pull it off.
I am excited. This feels special.
Other minutiae: I think False Awakening Suite is probably "Intro" from the whiteboard. Illumination Theory is almost definitely the epic. No idea on the others, but I'd like to think The Enemy Inside is Bad Larry. Just so's we have a name for the enemy.
Lyricists... I'll try and figure out later.