I know that this band was supposed to be Mike Portnoy's progressive metal band, but they never really felt like that to me. Sure they had grand intros, they had instrumentals, they had solos, but from a songwriting perspective they just made me think of your typical post-grunge type music. Although everybody was good at what they did, I just don't think of any of those guys as great creative minds.
Doesn't really phase me that they are gone. The second album was slightly better than the first, but I doubt they were ever going to turn into a legit progressive metal force.
To me, it was a lot of borrowing what Sherinian and Portnoy took from their time in DT, combining it with a more straightforward rock background from Bumblefoot and Soto, and having Portnoy arrange the songs into a "typical," "prog by numbers" song arrangement. And while the latter part of that sentence may sound like I am slamming them, it's not meant that way. Listening to their songs, there was some of that typical prog my numbers feel that made even the songs with more nonstandard arrangements somewhat predictable, I still felt that they were solid, enjoyable songs that worked just fine in the context of what they were doing. I liked the first album quite a bit. The second was more of the same, although I ultimately felt that it was not as consistent and, as a result, not quite as good. In fact, I remember when writing my review of the album, struggling with how to not sound negative while basically saying, "If you liked the first album, you will probably like this one, because it just sounds like what could have been leftovers from those sessions."
At the end of the day, I would have liked another album since I enjoyed a lot of songs from the first two. But I'm not overly upset about not getting one either.