This album is absolutely fantastic IMHO. Every listen brings new things to enjoy: like that "jazz fusion piano" thing that JR does in IT.. or that bass line during the guitar solo in Surrender to Reason...great, great stuff. I remember being 14 and discovering Dream Theater just when Awake was released (this really dates me). Since that moment I've been expecting religiously single every DT release. I remember vividely being blown away by ACOS, not so much by FII. Being really pleased and borderline obsessive with SFAM, and so on. By the time Octavarium came out I guess my taste in music changed a bit and I was into other things musically. I listened to it, but it wasn't the same for me. I didn't like the obvious Muse influence, band that I adored right at that time. I felt for the first time that a DT album had filler songs. I felt that they had a job to do, an album + big tour cycle every two years. Consequently with every release after that I was like..meh
.
Still bought every album, dvd and even quite a few ytsejam bottlegs; Still remained a big fan but that initial excitement was somehow gone. I really hit a low point in my relationship with DT when BCASL was released. ADTOE brought some of it back, but this baby here of an album had me travelling through time and recreate that excitement and giddiness that I had before.
This album makes me happy, that's it. I'm happy to see them inspired, to see that Mangini is the drummer they needed after MP left; happy to witness how JP just keeps becoming a bigger monster on the guitar with every album. Happy to see JR becoming a real sonic backbone and stay away sometimes from those 1000000 notes per minute that he used so much before. Happy to still have an amazing band sounding very focused and cohesive putting such epic songs.
These are great times
.