I'm a little hazy but i'm almost certain that they released the track lengths for Black Clouds along with the titles & artwork.
Granted - this was when MP was in the band and he might have wanted to go like " Hey check out our super proggy album ! "
Track lengths don't really excite me unless they're somehow interesting. Like a few 3 minute songs.
To me they're not as much about excitement, as they are about reassurance. Like, "Phew, so there are a few songs that are 7 - 10 minutes long. Now I can relax and not worry that somehow, the album is filled with 5 minute songs.
Why would that be a worry? Length =/= quality.
Or so I've been told...
Maybe not, but reasonably speaking, you'd need at least 7 minutes to be able to fit a couple verses and choruses, plus a typical length of a DT instrumental section into a song. So if a song is only 5 minutes, chances are, it's going to be lacking that long, awesome instrumental section that I'm looking forward to.
Besides, with Dream Theater, everything is pretty much assured anyway.
I have to disagree here.
While I enjoy great long and proggy songs, I don't think that a song
needs to be at least 7 minutes long to be fulfilling, nor do DT need to have a lengthy instrumental section in every single song on the album for them to be great. If there's a 5 minute long song on the album, or hell even a 4 minute long song, the focus shouldn't be on whether or not there's a massive instrumental section. Just focus on whether or not the actual song itself is great.
While they're nowhere near as great of a band as Dream Theater, DragonForce really comes to mind when I see these sorts of comments. Up until their most recent album, DF had a formula of releasing albums filled with 6+ minute long 'epics' that had massive instrumental sections and had one or two five minute long power ballads to "balance it out".
It actually worked pretty well for the first two albums, but by the time of their fourth album, it just got boring as hell and it really played a part in their reputation of just playing guitar shredding wankery. They ended up writing a lot of 3-5 minute long songs on their most recent album with only one or two 6+ minute long songs, and it actually did wonders for them. It's still by the numbers power metal, but it resulted in better quality songs.
Again, Dream Theater is a much better band than DragonForce, and they do a much better job in handling their longer songs. But I don't think they should ever feel required to make every song on their album at least 6 or 7 minutes long. And this is coming from someone whose favorite DT album is 6DoIT, which is filled to the brim with lengthy and proggy as hell songs.