One of the few things I could complain about is that most of the album was indeed written by John Boegehold, which I don't understand since the band has proven that they're very competent to write their own (damn good!) songs on X and Brief Nocturnes. The three albums before had some amazing songs as well, such as On A Perfect Day or She Is Everything.
Back to Oblivion: There are some small things you could criticize (like the drum beat in the instrumental part of The Center Line), but overall I think it's an underrated album.
I'm looking forward to hearing what Nick (our Nick, not NDV) talked about with Ted. Since they talked about the songwriting, and the promotional posts on FB etc implied that they all contributed stuff to the album, I'm guessing that maybe this one was composed mostly by the band (?).
I think a lot of the songs from the NDV-era were NDV's. Just looking at SB9, 5 of the 11 songs were penned by him or him and others in the band. Going backwards to Octane, other than the Flash suite (which was written by the whole band and Boegehold), the other 5 songs on the main album had 4 with NDV credits, and 3 of the 5 bonus tracks had him credited as well. And further back, 5 of the 8 main album tracks for Feel Euphoria have NDV credits as well.
It wasn't until X that NDV didn't compose or write (nearly) half of the music for an album. X was half Meros, a quarter Alan, and one each by Ryo and NDV, with Stan and John peppered throughout for music and lyrics.
Interestingly, it wasn't until BNADS that John Boegehold had a non-partnered writing credit for music: "Something Very Strange" and "Postcards From Perdition". Up until that album, most of Boegehold's songs were co-written mostly with Dave Meros, though he has written with Al, Ryo, Nick, and Stan. So I also do wonder what prompted the band to receive FIVE songs solely by Boegehold and use them for TOP, rather than write WITH him as they had done in the past. Maybe he had songs already done that they were happy to play, so not much writing or re-writing had to be done? Not that I am complaining because I think the Boegehold songs TOP are pretty great (especially "To Be Free Again" and "Disappear").
I'll be interested in seeing all the writing credits for NF, though if the music is good, it won't matter who wrote what to me. At the end of the day (har har), whether or not the PERFORMERS in SB wrote the music isn't very important - it's the performance itself that matters more, eh? Even is Ausmus and/or Boegehold wrote a song, that's still Al ripping out a guitar solo, or Ryo doing some crazy Hammond riff, or Dave doing an amazing bass groove. It's still Spock's Beard, through and through. That's just my thoughts.
-Marc.