Oh, god, they're all excellent! I hate that I can only vote for one. Christ, five's a lucky number.
1. The Bigger Picture
2. Fatal Tragedy
3. Bridges in the Sky
4. Panic Attack
5. Disappear
6. Repentance
7. The Best of Times
8. Vacant
Vacant is gorgeous, and is way more standalone than Through My Words was, but it still loses points for not having Stream of Consciousness on its tail. I see them as part of the same whole, and Stream of Consciousness is my favourite bit. The Best of Times is wonderful, but I don't know if it's twelve minutes of wonderful, whereas Repentance definitely is eleven minutes of haunting. Disappear and Panic Attack were a toss-up - Disappear is unique, there's nothing else quite like it in Dream Theater's repertoire, but Panic Attack is a crushing good song that I enjoy more often, so PA gets the nod today. BitS, FT and TBP are all incredible, but I think TBP is one of the very best songs they've ever written, in a way the other two just slightly aren't. Moving and perfectly formed. Fatal Tragedy is perfectly formed, too, it's a concise technical thriller, so it gets second place, but it doesn't move me in the same way as The Bigger Picture.
It feels so cut-throat placing them against each other, though. I don't like The Bigger Picture at the cost of The Best of Times, it doesn't dilute my appreciation for the others. Doing these lists kind of put into focus exactly how much I really do love all their music, and how much I hate putting any of it dead last. There's bits I'm not hot on, but it's usually less than one song per album. Even BCSL - which I think is the sound of a creative well running slightly dry just in time for the band's rejuvenation - there's songs I'd change, but none I'd lose. I think Systematic Chaos loses momentum as it continues, but I genuinely enjoy lots of things about every single song. I'm not listening to it and thinking, "Oh, well this is losing a lot of momentum in the context of the other seven tracks," that's who I become on a message board when I put it under a microscope - I'm thinking, "Repentance! Brilliant!"
What I'm really saying, is this thread has put into context that my posts on here are a portrait that's a lot more negative than I actually am. I'll rank the songs and pick out the reasons I can't place them higher, I'll rank the albums and brush over BCSL because it's not as good as Dream Theater, Images and Words or Systematic Chaos, but that's nothing like the experience of actually listening to it. Which probably seems obvious, spelled out, but it took eight utterly fantastic songs competing for my vote to click that thought into place. I don't know if I want this to be my electronic footprint.