4Six Degrees of Inner TurbulenceDream Theater
DT's creative pinnacleI play
Misunterstood, and an acoustic guitar appears, playing an odd, a bit dissonant chord progression. James starts singing simple, yet catchy atmospheric lines. Jordan plays with cellos and sound effects a la
Radiohead. Mike does some fills. Myung a few notes here and there. The atmosphere is quite relaxed yet mysterious, And it slowly builds up tension - then BOOM. Heavy riff, and now the chorus is more intense. Although the guitar is roaring at times, this never feels like a heavy metal song or anything. This virtue of playing with sounds and styles, had always been something DT like to do, and very well. But
Six Degrees took it to the next level - all of the members feel unleashed, experimenting, and finally doing the music they truly wanted after years of external producers (even though I'd argue they did an excellent job on Awake) and pressure from their label. They weren't neither afraid of showing off their influences:
The Great Debate screams Tool (a better song that anything Tool have written, imo),
Radiohead on Misunderstood and Disappear, classical music on Overture - Pantera is basically made a homage with The Glass Prison, and so on.
And then there's the title track. 42 mothafucking minutes of pure mindblowing awesomeness. Some people complain that it doesn't flow well, or that the ideas are not connected, or it has some filler, or some crap (is it a song or 8 separate tracks? - spoiler: the former, as stated by the band. Period), most of which I don't understand in the slightest. See, this tune was written like an epic symphony: there's the Overture, which shows the themes the song will present and later elaborate, in 6 sections, one per inner turbulence (duh), and the Finale, which quickly reprises the themes and has this epic ending. Makes sense, at least for me. And it's basically DT in a nutshell, really - virtually all of the styles they'd played, and would play in future records, can be found or at least hinted on Six Degrees.
I'll admit that I find myself liking SFAM less and less with time - it's just too technical at times, and it really drags my enjoyement of it, since I don't care anymore about hyper-speed solos and dozens of tempo changes. They still have my respects for making one of the most complex records ever in a purely technical sense, and make it such a great success. But on Six Degrees... holy moly, it's like they stooped caring for a moment about how many notes they could fill in a solo, and just focused on songwriting, and experimenting. This, in my opinion improved their music in every sense, making for some pretty creative moments, like the ending of
Misunderstood (can't help it, I love it), the samples/sounds Jordan plays on
The Glass Prison, or the manipulated drum sounds around the middle of The Great Debate, or how JP's solo on Goodnight Kiss goes from melancholic to desperate, and the samples do help a lot. As a side note, the tone he has through the whole album is glorious. Noisy and fucking heavy.
This used to be my favorite record ever. It's still the DT album I love most for sure, as I might sometimes discover a little detail I had missed, or could just follow what Jordan or Petrucci does, and get lost on the amount of great ideas after great ideas they were crafting. For someone who values creativity as much as me, this record is special. While some of their records don't struck me hard as used to, and I barely listen to them nowadays, I can always come back to Six Degrees, and be left in awe at such an achievement - in my opinion, the absolute peak of prog metal.
Recommended song: All of them3Weather SystemsAnathema
Raw, pure passionI've found a pattern among my all-time favorite albums: I didn't really like them at first. Or, at least, didn't think they were any special. Funny how life works. I know some people do not believe in growers -
you like it or not on a first listen, I know my tastes pretty well, they say. Well, good for you! But my own experience has showed me that my top 50 is plagued with growers, albums that I didn't really expect to end up being personal favorites. And that's both frustrating and awesome. I can easily overlook records that have the potential to gain a place up here, on the list, but it's also from growers where I find the most satisfaction, for I keep getting back to them, and loving each song a bit more with each listen - it's a fantastic experience to notice how things that used to bother me, slowly enter into a "don't care about" section, just to escalate towards "I fucking love it" with time. That's why I really try to give albums opportunities over and over again, just to see if they click. Sometimes they do, and it warms my heart. If they don't, well, I can revisit it in a couple of months. Or years. There's no hurry, no one's rushing me.
So the story goes like this: me, a pleb that just got into prog and loves DT to death, but it's also getting interested on the genre. There used to be a pretty active blog about DT in spanish (the guy who ran it still visits this forum lol), and from time to time he would recommend a couple of proggy bands. But what interested me most was his 2012 top 10 albums. The top choices intrigued me: Flying Colors at #1, and Weather Systems in the second place. Never heard of those, but since our tastes were quite similar, gave them a chance. Loved
Flying Colors pretty much on the first spins, but this Anathema band... ugh, not my thing. Too "pretty" or whatever. Not my cuppa tea. But for some reason, I didn't delete the album from my mp3 player - I wasn't into many bands at the time, so I might have left them just in case I was bored with the other stuff.
It happened back in September 2013. I had to make a visit to the doctor on another city, but since I hadn't scheduled a session, I had to wait until several patients finished. Of course, this took hours.
Endless hours of pure dullness and agony, I thought. I know it was just two years ago, but damn, I was fucking impatient back then. But I had my mp3 player and a pair of headphones, so what the fuck. Sighed on the chair, staring at that crappy Phillips Go!, and chose "Weather Systems", telling myself I'd give it one last chance before deleting it. Maybe... maybe because I had nothing to focus on but the music... it
clicked. No, I wasn't blown away - very few times I've experienced that in life, and less with music. But I liked what I heard, thus I promised to give it more listens as to digest it. It was beautiful. In just a couple of months I was in love with the record, and started to get into the rest of their discography. Damn, it was tough, specially Judgment. But so worthy.
I'm bad talking about albums, I know. So let me mend it a bit meandering about how this record sounds. It's layered. Heavily. And it's very atmospheric. Not as much as a Shoegaze album, but there are some obvious influences of it, as well as of post-rock, since it takes a slow-buildup-into-a-big-climax most of the tracks. Some call this style "atmospheric rock". And it suits them perfect. Whereas WHBWH was definitely happy and joyful all the way through, there are moments of sorrow and darkness here, yet far away from their 90s' output. But what makes this record so special for me is a single aspect: feels. Some may prefer Judgement, or even the previous album, but Weather Systems will always have a special place in my soul, for it is the most intense, cathartic emotional experience I've ever listened to. Anathema are a band with heavy focus on emotions, and I think it's here where they reached their absolute creative, and emotional zenit.
I think my words shall never do it justice, for the only way to truly experience this albums, is, well, listening to it. I always like to find people who have a deep connection with it - those of us who found something truly special on Weather Systems know it's hard for others to understand our passion. All I can say is, I fucking love it.
Recommended song: Untouchable pt. 12In AbsentiaPorcupine Tree
Goddamnit, Steven, you creep motherfuckerDidn't like this album on a first listen.
"This is fucking overrated", I thought. And then ignored it for weeks. But that was back when I was still discovering prog, getting into it. Dream Theater were already my fav band and biggest obsession, but now wanted to look for more of this genre. So after a disappointing beginning with Porcupine Tree, went with Opeth. Couldn't fucking stand Mikael's growls, thus I turned to Damnation. And loved it. But... it also sounded slightly similar to In Absentia - was surprised to see Wilson producing and writing some stuff for it. So, just out of curiosity, gave PT another chance, just to see if this time they'd click. Had no hopes about it, and my expectations were pretty low.
Blackest Eyes starts, now I'm listening carefully, and... BOOM. Heavy riff, crazy drumming, and a break down. Acoustic guitars and a beautiful atmosphere, just to become heavy again. This contrast blew me away like few times has happened to me. Then
Trains, a nice ballad, that I'd later find out was a fan favorite. But for the longest time, it was just an ok track in my book - couldn't see what was so "awesome" about it. I didn't care much, for I was loving the album. After that, I don't really remember much, other than In Absentia kept growing and growing on me a hella lot with time, specially
Trains! I'd have never imagined such a little song would become one of my very favorite tracks, ever.
What draws me back to this album each time is how unique it sounds. Not only in the context of Wilson's discography, but in any context to be honest - I haven't heard a single record, nor song, that sounds remotely like this, and for that I love it. Ok, no, that's only one of the reasons I do. Creativity. You know, after the happy/melancholic Lightbulb Sun, and getting into metal, again, Wilson started to experiment with it. And created, right here, a fusion of all these styles he had previously played. There are psychedelic, space-y soundscapes that make my consciousness drift away (if that makes any sense). The choruses are catchy as hell, the guitars heavy and noisy, yet with a very clean sound. The dark drones and lyrics, damn.
I feel like I'm really failing to describe why I love
In Absentia this much. Maybe it's just were I connect the most with all of Wilson's releases, and despite thinking there were some fillers, I just love every minute of it all now. Although I love basically everything he has released, this will likely remain in a special place in me for ages to come.
Recommended song: Trains 
Topic: Le Sacul's fav records! v2. Hey boy, where are you going with that little toy? (Read 19064 times)