Best DT record since SFAM, at least for me.
Pretty much echoing your sentiments! The best since SFaM (or at least SDOiT) – for me certainly. And I realize this is a bold statement that may have been voiced on some previous occasions, but I feel it really rings true this time.
But before I get to the gist of things - hello everyone! Great to be here on DTF, where I lurked for years but was never prompted to partake – until now. What enticed me to join just now is pure excitement of what we got with Distance Over Time.
Though I am new to these neck of the internet woods, I am by no means a DT newbie – I started listening to the band in late 2003 and in fact my first album was the freshly released Train of Thought. And even though I hold that album in relatively high regard due to sheer sentimental reasons, my favorite records are SfaM and IaW. I am leaning more towards a prog-side of things than heaviness when it comes to DT music (although I do not refrain from heavy, quite the contrary! It's just that I prefer certain kind of heaviness to that kind which became prevalent in latter stage of their career)
And that is exactly why I decided to join just now – in order to get off my chest how awesome I think Distance Over Time is and how it rekindled my passion for this band.
(And the funny thing is I wasn't even that convinced by the three singles that preceded it, though two of them grew on me quite a bit)
Though I should say that I am belonging to that rather underpopulated camp of The Astonishing aficionados – I have a thing for conceptual, operatic pieces and TA was such a breath of fresh air for me, albeit marred by some excessive material. Still, there's at least 55 minutes of top-notch DT music there which was much more than what we used to get per album since Scenes (just a side note that I loathe SC and BC&SL – needed to get that off my chest too).
About DoT: the four-song run of Barstool Warrior/Room 137/SN2/At Wit's End is UNREAL. Vintage DT – think the missing piece between IaW and Awake, or between Awake and FII – that's how these songs sound. They're energetic, fresh, LOADS of fun and for some reason, when listening for the first few times (each time with a huge grin on my face and a feeling of euphoria I haven't felt for DT in a long while) I couldn't memorize any of the musical parts clearly – and then it hit me why:
There is so much going on in those 4-6 minutes of each of these songs' (except AWE which clocks at more than 9 minutes and is packed with ear candy – such a fitting acronym for this song, btw) that it's just ridiculous. Level of variety and diversity that we didn't for quite some time. AWE is, alongside BAI, the best Mangini-era song for me and one of DT's finest moment - a perfect song all throughout, not a second wasted - as is Barstool Warrior.
Out of Reach is a very lovely ballad. I am not big on ballads myself, but this one I don't mind at all, in fact it is akin of some of their more successful ventures of this ilk, a la Through Her Eyes and Anna Lee. Pale Blue Dot is terrific and just as engaging – although it does seem to miss that X factor that makes it an instant jaw-dropper like the aforementioned four songs that are a highlight for me.
Oh, and – the sound of the record, the production, the mix – is absolutely out of this world. Petrucci's guitar leads have never sounded better, Myung is on absolute fire (finally!), Rudess is measured and collected throughout, Mangini shos off some proper tricks and got his sound right and La Brie does some super interesting things with his vocals and sings great throughout (it seems like he's singing in a range that's more comfortable for him now and as a result he just sounds right).
As a band rejuvenated, that's how this album sounds.
So yeah – nice to be here and SO nice to have DT at the top of their powers back!