try to play As I Am and have the ending of the song going directly into this
It sounds great indeed!..
I really like the solo section, one of my favorites. I do agree that it doesn't seem to fit, but I find that to be the case with alot of their music. It's one of the primary reasons I like DT. Their songs aren't boring because of this. Once you get to know these type of songs they blend a bit better. I actually think now that the transition is just fine.
The outro blends so well into ITPoE. If I'm just listening to TMotLS I have a hard time NOT letting it go to the next track.
If the rest of the song was a track on it's own, then I wouldn't like it much. But that's not the point. It is part of the song! I can actually get through the song up to the solo section because I know it's coming. I can think of quite a few songs (not just DT) that I like simply because of a section of it. There is something to be said for letting the song build and set a mood. Some of the hardest sections of music are preceded by slow passages and that gives the heavy part more impact.
100% agreed with this, especially the bolded..
Literally, the instrumental section feels so disconnected to the rest of the song, if you showed it to someone who hasn't heard the song, there's no way that person would've known it was actually a balladesque song in disguise.
I think that's kind of the whole point of doing it, don't you think?.. They're expert musicians, is not that they didn't know how to put that section in one song and randomly put it in there just for the sake of it.. As you mentioned, maybe they did it because there already was a long ballad in the album, and didn't wanted to do another one (even when they have very different structures and a very different vibe as well)..
But, as I've said many times, having that type of element within a song where the instrumental section seems to come from nowhere or at least it's very unexpected (thus why it feels like is from another song, which logically speaking makes no sense) is something DT did in other songs too.. Beyond this Life has it, Endless Sacrifice has it and Sacrificed Sons has it.. And, IMO, these four songs as a whole (and particularly the break-moments) are awesome just like they are, and mostly because they are like that..
Thing is none of these instrumental sections you named feel so disconnected to the song as TMOLS, you could have as well named BAI and Metropolis and that's clearly not the case.
Actually, no.. BAI and Met pt. 1 are very different in that aspect, but I get that this kind of things are mainly subjetive (we're talking about how a song
feels after all)..
But yeah, I don't think any of these songs has their sections "disconnected".. They are all very well connected actually..
Example of sections in a song that I feel disconected?: BMUBMD's unison, beginning of Bridges in the Sky, and a few on Illumination Theory (especially the transition into the orchestral part).. A thing that I guess was due to the lack of Portnoy, but they did have take care of this minimal issue in TA, and rest of the songs in ADToE and DT12..