IMO Labrie's two best performances are FII and SDOIT. FII also has amazing production.
The issue I have with the album is that a few of the songs are some of the worst by DT.
You not me, Just let me breathe, Burning My Soul are 3 of the worst DT ever recored IMO.
Hollow Years, Take Away my pain, New Millenium are mediocre DT songs.
Peruvian Skies, Hells Kitchen, Lines in the Sand, Anna Lee, Trial of Tears are classic DT songs IMO.
So.... I love FII but it has major problems which is why I place it around 5-7th in their catalogue.
As I've posted here many times, I got into DT when PMU broke in the summer of 1992. I thought I&W struck the perfect prog:metal balance. Awake went to the metal side of the balance but I still liked it, and ACOS was just amazing. I can still remember the first time I listened to FII. At the time, my wife was still pretending to like DT, so we listened to it together in the living room of a new apartment with a bunch of unpacked boxes stacked up in the room. I thought and still think New Millennium was terrible. You Not Me made me say WTF? A blatant attempt at a radio hit. Peruvian Skies was just meh. It took until Hollow Years to find a song I really liked, but ballads were not why I was a DT fan. I can't remember listening too much further, and it really felt reminiscent of the fiasco that was Metallica's
Load from a couple years earlier. Fortunately, DT bounced back in a big way two years later.
After 20 plus years, I consider YNM, HY, HK, AL and ToT to be the best songs on the album, but none would make a DT top ten list. Lines in the Sand would be better without the chorus, and New Millennium remains a bottom-5 DT song. The rest is just meh, and the interesting thing is that, had the label not "interfered," it would have been a significantly worse album.