Mike Mangini is amazing in this record and it could be argued that this is his best Dream Theater work to date. These are my favorite Mangini moments in the album:
11. Pale Blue Dot (1:06 - 1:13) - Machine gun hi-hats are always fun to listen to, but more especially when it makes sense in the context of a song. This is distance over time, speed, as the spacecraft lifts off towards space. Over a 19/16 beat.
10. Untethered Angel (3:25 - 3:30) - I like it when Mangini is doing something different that sounds routine. He could just have drummed the snare to follow the keys and guitars like what he did in Outcry. But he opted to maintain that basic bass and snare beat underneath it to maintain the continuity from the previous section.
9. Barstool Warrior (0:53) - Mangini was just doing his usual fast and frantic drum rolls, but that brief ascending drum roll in the octobans syncing with Jordan's keys brought a smile to my face.
8. Fall Into the Light (0:08 - 0:33) - taking from the Mike Portnoy playbook for Dream Theater songs, doing a 6/8, 3/4, and 4/4 over the same riff.
7. S2n (1:06 - 1:30) - One of the grooviest rhythms ever in a Dream Theater song. The interplay between the bass, snare, and hi-hats is perfect.
6. At Wit's End (5:20 - 5:50) - Mangini played the bass and snare tight to build up to the outro, but the kicker for me here is the hi-hat work. That perfectly timed open hi-hat hit. The syncopated metronome. Then the weird hi-hat pattern in the left hand that makes you crazy thinking how you will hit the snare while doing all this.
, a pattern which Mangini stopped at the right moment so that it will not distract from the emotional outro.
5. Room 137 (0:25 - 0:37) - Mangini drumming a 7/4 beat with a triplet feel with snare, toms and bass, but he just had to insert the half note-hits in the cymbals in 4/4 so that it will not sound difficult.
4. S2n outro - The drumming here is just fun, with Mangini, JP and JM just locked together adding more and more hits to the start of the riff every cycle. Reminds me of Mangini and Pat Badger's work in "Leave Me Alone" by Extreme.
3. S2n chorus - Again, FUN really describes the drumming in these S2n sections. The chorus here, with the rides and the bass setting the groove, is what Mangini was trying to achieve in the chorus of the Live, Die, Kill section of Illumination Theory, but he now has the musical material to back up the groove.
2. Paralyzed intro - This is MM's 6:00 moment, where he demonstrates how musical he plays the drums. Killer drum composition, could have arranged the song so that this is the intro, not the riff.
1. Pale Blue Dot (5:48 - 6:02) - the whole PBD instrumental has killer drums, but this section where Mangini sounds like he's just winging it with a changing tempo is topnotch. That ride cymbal bell hit at 6:00 really made me clap.
How about you? What's your favorite Mangini moment in D/T?
Topic: Your Favorite Mike Mangini moments in D/T (Read 1558 times)