Not even close.....
Train of Thought is to me good but not what I want from Dream Theater. It's metal alright but not very much prog. I rank it towards the bottom 3rd of the discography.
I say this in the nicest way possible, but can't that be a good thing? Some of my favorite albums ever, by various bands, were ones where I was wanting something else than what they gave me (Awake, for example). And often times, it's not like I can even specifically say, "I wanted
this," but after an initial listen or two I thought, "Whatever I wanted, it wasn't
this," but time has a funny way of revealing everything. And it's not like I am calling Train of Thought my favorite DT album (it's not) or an all-time great (I can't go that far), but once enough time has passed and I have can look back at it with a little bit of perspective, it can be pretty exciting to realize that one of my favorite bands threw me such a curveball, one that I did not see coming, and for me Train of Thought now falls under that banner. And it's funny to think that when Octavarium was released, I breathe a huge sigh of relief, like, "Okay, this is the Dream Theater I want," as it was balanced, warm and proggy, yet here we are in 2019 and I now consider Train of Thought to the superior record of the two by a pretty good margin.