DT15: A View From The Top Of The World (Timeline for DT15)

[Tony From Long Island]

Not a big fan of "These Walls".   Sounds like DT going commercial and JP sounds uninspired for the first time in DT history. 

To me Octavarium was the first time I was like "This is Dream Theater?"   The album has grown on me through the years and I do actually listen to it a fair amount but I was incredibly disappointed when it first came out.

Train of Thought isn't my favorite album but it still sounded inspired and like Dream Theater was moving the needle.

Octavarium through ADTOE sounded like a band going through the motions to me. 

Now before anyone freaks out ....Dream Theater "going through the motions" is still arguably a top 10 band for me.   It just wasn't the brilliance and magic we had on the preceding albums.

The Astonishing and DOT brought some of that magic back IMO and I am extremely excited for the new album.

As if "going commercial"  is this awful thing.   Writing good songs and sorta a good thing, right?   Being a fan of DT for 30 years now, my favorite DT song is "I Walk Beside You," which is their least prog song by a mile. 

[lovethedrake]

Not a big fan of "These Walls".   Sounds like DT going commercial and JP sounds uninspired for the first time in DT history. 

To me Octavarium was the first time I was like "This is Dream Theater?"   The album has grown on me through the years and I do actually listen to it a fair amount but I was incredibly disappointed when it first came out.

Train of Thought isn't my favorite album but it still sounded inspired and like Dream Theater was moving the needle.

Octavarium through ADTOE sounded like a band going through the motions to me. 

Now before anyone freaks out ....Dream Theater "going through the motions" is still arguably a top 10 band for me.   It just wasn't the brilliance and magic we had on the preceding albums.

The Astonishing and DOT brought some of that magic back IMO and I am extremely excited for the new album.

As if "going commercial"  is this awful thing.   Writing good songs and sorta a good thing, right?   Being a fan of DT for 30 years now, my favorite DT song is "I Walk Beside You," which is their least prog song by a mile.

If you’re going commercial for the sake of going commercial it usually isn’t going to be something I love.

I walk beside you is one of my least favorite dream theater songs.  Sounded like a u2 ripoff.

To each their own though.

[CirclesSquared]

These Walls being startlingly close to Linkin Park's From the Inside

I thought These Walls was supposed to be another Muse ripoff, according to this forum.

Never Enough was a Muse ripoff. A very clear one, I might add.

I remember band or, rather, MP being very vocal about the direct influences for their songs around this era and that's one of the aspects that really bugged me about it. Even without them referencing them openly it was just too obvious in the music (and in JLB's singing). In the same vein, I Walk Beside You reeks of U2, Labrie actually emulates Bono the Record's (South Park reference here) voice.

[Dream Team]

Yeah, that's meaningless.

I backed up my claims with what data I could find quickly. Is there data that contradicts? I'd like to see sales for Japan and Europe.

Scenes surely has a reputation as a prog classic, but I would bet younger fans are into ToT more than Scenes.
ToT was also massively controversial when it was released, I read more discussion about that album over the years, than I have for Scenes or any other DT album other than IaW, throughout the internet, whether it be on progarchives (where Scenes does has more reviews than ToT I think), metal archives, Steve Hoffman, and any other prog or metal sites I've visited.

If one album has a reputation as a prog classic and one doesn't, maybe there's a reason...

Sales can often be misleading and sales could potentially have been inflated for TOT because of the success of Scenes years earlier, solidifying the popularity of the band as a heavyweight within the Prog music genre.

There is a favourite 4 album thread on this very forum from not long ago. Scenes literally has 100 more votes than TOT. If you are going to make the statement that "It's arguable that Train of Thought is actually more popular than Scenes", then we have to take into consideration how popularity for the two has fared over time.

Good post, argument over.

[TAC]

Scenes was massive for the band. Train Of Thought benefitted great from following Scenes (yes, I know it actually followed 6 D's..). But with Scenes, the band exploded in terms of popularity.

They played a much bigger place in Boston on that tour and it was packed. Train's sales were to already DT fans and the ones that finally hopped on the ..um..train.

[darkshade]

It's a bit rich to say/suggest that trading off solos is showing evidence of jazz influence. I mean, technically, any band that routinely solos might be able to claim that too-- even Slayer. That's not the type of influence we are talking about.

I don't know what else to say, other than you underestimate the scope of influence Jazz has had on music over the last 100+ years.
All the prog bands from the 70s that influenced DT were all listening to jazz and blues when they were growing up.
Iron Maiden and Slayer, two bands who also do the solo duels in their songs, were listening to early heavy metal and/or prog rock bands of the 70s, all of which were listening to heavy amounts of jazz and blues (Sabbath, Priest, Deep Purple, Genesis, Camel, The Doors, etc...)

The idea of taking a solo in rock music to begin with, comes a lot from Jazz and blues, from John Lee Hooker, to Charlie Christian.

[darkshade]

About Scenes vs ToT.
I think you guys are mixing up "popular" with "critically acclaimed" though both terms are not always mutually exclusive, of course.
St. Anger is one of Metallica's most popular albums, because it's such an objectively bad album (no offense to anyone who enjoys it)
Everyone knows about St. Anger, along with Master of Puppets and TBA. Casual music listeners probably don't know Load/Reload or their last 2 albums as well as those albums.

ToT was really popular because it was something a lot of fans disliked, and the move to full-metal album was very controversial.
Looking at the sales numbers again, I see Scenes sold less in the US than FII as well, along with SDoIT and ToT.
ToT may have turned a lot of fans off as well, as Octavarium sold much less in the US compared to the previous albums, but later album sales could also be affected by illegal downloading, and eventually streaming. Again, this is why I wish we could look at overall sales around the world.

[TAC]

ToT was really popular because it was something a lot of fans disliked

 

That makes like zero sense.

[darkshade]

ToT was really popular because it was something a lot of fans disliked

 

That makes like zero sense.

As I explained above, it was popular because it was popular to hate on it when it came out (that is my perspective from being online in 2004 soaking up as much DT info as I could back then.)

[Buddyhunter1]

ToT was really popular because it was something a lot of fans disliked

 

That makes like zero sense.

As I explained above, it was popular because it was popular to hate on it when it came out (that is my perspective from being online in 2004 soaking up as much DT info as I could back then.)

I don't think that's what "popular" means. Wouldn't that make it infamous? Polarizing?

By that logic The Astonishing would be the most popular DT album.

[TheBarstoolWarrior]

It's a bit rich to say/suggest that trading off solos is showing evidence of jazz influence. I mean, technically, any band that routinely solos might be able to claim that too-- even Slayer. That's not the type of influence we are talking about.

I don't know what else to say, other than you underestimate the scope of influence Jazz has had on music over the last 100+ years.
All the prog bands from the 70s that influenced DT were all listening to jazz and blues when they were growing up.
Iron Maiden and Slayer, two bands who also do the solo duels in their songs, were listening to early heavy metal and/or prog rock bands of the 70s, all of which were listening to heavy amounts of jazz and blues (Sabbath, Priest, Deep Purple, Genesis, Camel, The Doors, etc...)

The idea of taking a solo in rock music to begin with, comes a lot from Jazz and blues, from John Lee Hooker, to Charlie Christian.

But wait...if this is really a point about how jazz has influenced most music since the early 1900s (a point I am not disputing and with which I agree) because so many rock and metal bands have instrumental solos-- so it's really more about instrumentation and roles-- then how does that help your argument that the classic era ended with Octavarium? Do the Mangini era albums have fewer solos or fewer instances of dueling solos?

And I could be wrong on this, because I haven't listened to it in a while, but doesn't Octavarium actually have fewer or shorter guitar solos than any of the Mangini era albums? I seem to recall that tracks 2, 3, 4 at the least either have no solo or have far more scaled back solo sections vs. album like DoT. Wouldn't that make them less influenced by Jazz according to your argument?

[darkshade]

ToT was really popular because it was something a lot of fans disliked

 

That makes like zero sense.

As I explained above, it was popular because it was popular to hate on it when it came out (that is my perspective from being online in 2004 soaking up as much DT info as I could back then.)

I don't think that's what "popular" means. Wouldn't that make it infamous? Polarizing?

By that logic The Astonishing would be the most popular DT album.

I get it. But I think TA just made some fans just throw in the towel, like me, and just move on.. DoT brought me back in, and I'm now curious about DT15.
Whereas ToT got a lot of people to engage in debate over it, and most remained hopeful ToT wasn't the beginning of a trend.

[darkshade]

It's a bit rich to say/suggest that trading off solos is showing evidence of jazz influence. I mean, technically, any band that routinely solos might be able to claim that too-- even Slayer. That's not the type of influence we are talking about.

I don't know what else to say, other than you underestimate the scope of influence Jazz has had on music over the last 100+ years.
All the prog bands from the 70s that influenced DT were all listening to jazz and blues when they were growing up.
Iron Maiden and Slayer, two bands who also do the solo duels in their songs, were listening to early heavy metal and/or prog rock bands of the 70s, all of which were listening to heavy amounts of jazz and blues (Sabbath, Priest, Deep Purple, Genesis, Camel, The Doors, etc...)

The idea of taking a solo in rock music to begin with, comes a lot from Jazz and blues, from John Lee Hooker, to Charlie Christian.

But wait...if this is really a point about how jazz has influenced most music since the early 1900s (a point I am not disputing and with which I agree) because so many rock and metal bands have instrumental solos-- so it's really more about instrumentation and roles-- then how does that help your argument that the classic era ended with Octavarium? Do the Mangini era albums have fewer solos or fewer instances of dueling solos?

And I could be wrong on this, because I haven't listened to it in a while, but doesn't Octavarium actually have fewer or shorter guitar solos than any of the Mangini era albums? I seem to recall that tracks 2, 3, 4 at the least either have no solo or have far more scaled back solo sections vs. album like DoT. Wouldn't that make them less influenced by Jazz according to your argument?

I think you're combining two arguments I made that had little to do with each other. I admitted that there are some jazzy moments on ADTOE earlier, and duel solos still exist in the Mangini era. Octavarium was largely a reaction to ToT, lighter songs, lighter production, etc.. You're taking the "jazz influence" in DT's music too deep here. I merely said there was some jazz influence in DT's music, but there was less of it with each successive album, or at least the melting pot of their music was more homogenized (is that the right word?) by Octavarium.

[TheBarstoolWarrior]

It's a bit rich to say/suggest that trading off solos is showing evidence of jazz influence. I mean, technically, any band that routinely solos might be able to claim that too-- even Slayer. That's not the type of influence we are talking about.

I don't know what else to say, other than you underestimate the scope of influence Jazz has had on music over the last 100+ years.
All the prog bands from the 70s that influenced DT were all listening to jazz and blues when they were growing up.
Iron Maiden and Slayer, two bands who also do the solo duels in their songs, were listening to early heavy metal and/or prog rock bands of the 70s, all of which were listening to heavy amounts of jazz and blues (Sabbath, Priest, Deep Purple, Genesis, Camel, The Doors, etc...)

The idea of taking a solo in rock music to begin with, comes a lot from Jazz and blues, from John Lee Hooker, to Charlie Christian.

But wait...if this is really a point about how jazz has influenced most music since the early 1900s (a point I am not disputing and with which I agree) because so many rock and metal bands have instrumental solos-- so it's really more about instrumentation and roles-- then how does that help your argument that the classic era ended with Octavarium? Do the Mangini era albums have fewer solos or fewer instances of dueling solos?

And I could be wrong on this, because I haven't listened to it in a while, but doesn't Octavarium actually have fewer or shorter guitar solos than any of the Mangini era albums? I seem to recall that tracks 2, 3, 4 at the least either have no solo or have far more scaled back solo sections vs. album like DoT. Wouldn't that make them less influenced by Jazz according to your argument?

I think you're combining two arguments I made that had little to do with each other. I admitted that there are some jazzy moments on ADTOE earlier, and duel solos still exist in the Mangini era. Octavarium was largely a reaction to ToT, lighter songs, lighter production, etc.. You're taking the "jazz influence" in DT's music too deep here. I merely said there was some jazz influence in DT's music, but there was less of it with each successive album, or at least the melting pot of their music was more homogenized (is that the right word?) by Octavarium.

Oh Okay. I think we agree on that specific thing then.

If you just meant that some of the things jazz musicians did back in the day-- Charlie Christian showing that guitars could also take a solo, the bebop guys taking long extended solos they weren't afforded in the big band days, and even drum kits as we know them, to take a few examples-- reverberated through the decades and influenced musicians who don't even share much harmonic or melodic vocabulary, then I agree. We are pretty much all indebted to those jazz pioneers.

I still can't wrap my head around why you think that the musical content was more eclectic up until Octavarium, and that since then, DT's music is less diverse with each successive album, but sounds like we'll just have to leave it at that.

[darkshade]

Because, as I've stated before on this thread and elsewhere, the main component for DT's music since Ocatavarium is METAL, whereas before SC, metal was just 'one' of their musical ingredients for their songs, or overall musical landscape (production values, tones, etc..)

To me, metal was split evenly with prog, rock, fusion, and whatever else they would throw in. Now it's easily 60-80% metal dominating their sound. That is my perspective, as someone who doesn't listen to a lot of metal these days, so on the outside looking in, that is what it seems like to me and my ears.

[Peter Mc]

Judging by past threads on here, Train Of Thought is an album that seems to be many people’s first DT album and it is well liked here.  I like it too but it’s not a favourite and, bigger album sales or not, it’s not SFAM or I&W.  If they did an anniversary tour for that album (or any post SFAM album) I’d be very surprised.

Also the comment that DT used to make a different album every time and the suggestion that they don’t now is strange to me.  ADTOE is very different to DT12 which is very different to The Astonishing which is very different to DOT.  They’ve made 4 very distinct albums with Mangini.  People like to write off The Astonishing and I agree that it can be hard going to get through the whole thing.  I think though if you made a single disc version of the edited highlights, it would stand up pretty well to most single disc DT albums.

I was listening to a bit of Falling Into Infinity the other day for the first time in a long time.  It’s not my favourite as it’s too patchy for me, just too many songs that I have zero interest in hearing again.  I never realised though in the moment quite how much of a departure it was for them.  There’s some really mature stuff on here, more prog in the vein of Rush/Floyd than the crazy technical metal they’re known for.  It’s barely a metal album at all.  I’d really like DT to have another go at this and make a more mature prog album with songs like Lines In The Sand, Trial Of Tears, Hells Kitchen etc. where they’re not playing a million notes per second.  Seeing as they now have the most virtuosic line up they’ve ever had, that’s probably unlikely.  I suppose The Astonishing wasn’t a million notes per second but that wasn’t written by the band and was maybe going too far into schmaltzy musical theatre (by design) rather than mature modern prog music.  I’m sure I’ll enjoy the new one though, whatever they do.

[TAC]

Because, as I've stated before on this thread and elsewhere, the main component for DT's music since Ocatavarium is METAL, whereas before SC, metal was just 'one' of their musical ingredients for their songs, or overall musical landscape (production values, tones, etc..)

To me, metal was split evenly with prog, rock, fusion, and whatever else they would throw in. Now it's easily 60-80% metal dominating their sound. That is my perspective, as someone who doesn't listen to a lot of metal these days, so on the outside looking in, that is what it seems like to me and my ears.

Awake wasn't based on metal? Scenes? They are both easily more metal than ADTOE and The Astonishing. Maybe even Distance Over Time.

[Enigmachine]

About Scenes vs ToT.
I think you guys are mixing up "popular" with "critically acclaimed" though both terms are not always mutually exclusive, of course.
St. Anger is one of Metallica's most popular albums, because it's such an objectively bad album (no offense to anyone who enjoys it)
Everyone knows about St. Anger, along with Master of Puppets and TBA. Casual music listeners probably don't know Load/Reload or their last 2 albums as well as those albums.

ToT was really popular because it was something a lot of fans disliked, and the move to full-metal album was very controversial.
Looking at the sales numbers again, I see Scenes sold less in the US than FII as well, along with SDoIT and ToT.
ToT may have turned a lot of fans off as well, as Octavarium sold much less in the US compared to the previous albums, but later album sales could also be affected by illegal downloading, and eventually streaming. Again, this is why I wish we could look at overall sales around the world.

"objectively bad"

Yeah, no. You can't quantify music quality in an objective way. You can have music that appeals to a particular subculture (or offends them) and with some practice, you can get consistently positive results. This is why a lot of supposedly 'jump the shark' moments tend to be instances in which the band simply changes style towards something the subculture is not accustomed to. I've heard people make pretty compelling arguments on paper for why St Anger could be seen as great stuff. I don't agree with them, but am glad that they found a way to connect with it.

Also, I don't know why we're looking at sales when it's kind of an antiquated way of looking at music popularity nowadays. This isn't two decades ago, this is today. Anyone getting into DT or revisiting them are not particularly likely to be straight up buying the album, but streaming it or even going to YouTube.

I think you're combining two arguments I made that had little to do with each other. I admitted that there are some jazzy moments on ADTOE earlier, and duel solos still exist in the Mangini era. Octavarium was largely a reaction to ToT, lighter songs, lighter production, etc.. You're taking the "jazz influence" in DT's music too deep here. I merely said there was some jazz influence in DT's music, but there was less of it with each successive album, or at least the melting pot of their music was more homogenized (is that the right word?) by Octavarium.

Alright, so we've got (and only for the MM era)... classic prog metal (On the Backs of Angels, At Wit's End, so on), elements of chill jazz rock (This is the Life's second verse really brings this out), 80s style neo-prog (Barstool Warrior), melodic thrash (Fall Into the Light, Behind the Veil), Tchaikovsky style orchestral stuff (The Embracing Circle), jazz fusion freakouts (Surrender to Reason's solo, S2N, arguably the intro of A Life Left Behind, Untethered Angel's mid-section arguably wouldn't be that out of place on an Al Di Meola album), musical theatre (literally The Astonishing), chunky alt-metal (BMUBMD, Paralyzed), spaghetti western style acoustics (Fall Into the Light again), shades of modern prog metal / djent (Pale Blue Dot, arguably The Enemy Inside, Illumination Theory and Enigma Machine), flighty prog rock (Breaking All Illusions), modernised hard rock (Viper King), almost hymn / churchy material or military march stuff (Brother Can You Hear Me, idk what to call it at this moment precisely). folksy tunes (Hymn of a Thousand Voices), arena rock (Our New World, The Looking Glass), elements of textural film score type stuff in the vein of someone like Hanz Zimmer (Pale Blue Dot's spacey atmospherics and general harmonic style, False Awakening Suite), piano balladry (Far From Heaven), experimental electronic elements (NOMAC tracks, though a tamer integration in Outcry and BMUBMD with the drum loops), stepping into pop territory at times (Beneath the Surface, Out of Reach, Chosen also wouldn't look that out of place next to something like Let it Go as far as pop/theatre material is concerned), even psychedelia if you squint hard enough (Room 137's choruses and maybe pre-choruses have elements of this). Sure sounds homogenous, doesn't it?

Awake wasn't based on metal? Scenes? They are both easily more metal than ADTOE and The Astonishing. Maybe even Distance Over Time.

WDaDU too, which is, other than Status Seeker, pretty much entirely 80s style prog metal.

[TheBarstoolWarrior]

Because, as I've stated before on this thread and elsewhere, the main component for DT's music since Ocatavarium is METAL, whereas before SC, metal was just 'one' of their musical ingredients for their songs, or overall musical landscape (production values, tones, etc..)

To me, metal was split evenly with prog, rock, fusion, and whatever else they would throw in. Now it's easily 60-80% metal dominating their sound. That is my perspective, as someone who doesn't listen to a lot of metal these days, so on the outside looking in, that is what it seems like to me and my ears.

Awake wasn't based on metal? Scenes? They are both easily more metal than ADTOE and The Astonishing. Maybe even Distance Over Time.

Agreed. And the ironic thing here is that TA is probably the least metal of all the albums and it's being put in the 60-80% bucket 

[Wim Kruithof]

off-topic completely but...

Being a fan of DT for 30 years now, my favorite DT song is "I Walk Beside You," which is their least prog song by a mile.

I Walk Beside You is close to You Not Me at the bottom of the well, to me. There are not many DT songs I skip but for these both I make an exception. Unreal to see one of them at someone else's top-pick.

[Enigmachine]

I actually did a calculation on which DT albums were the most metallic, in terms of the highest percentage of songs that could definitively be called metal. The funny thing is that at the moment, it looks kinda like a distorted W shape, except with the middle section being a literal jolt up instead of a smooth curve. Funny thing is, without D/T... the trend is just completely dead and if anything (if you really squint), it looks like the trend might be downwards or just straight up nothing. Hell, it arguably changes more from album to album than over long periods of time, on average. In an ironic twist, half of the 60-80% metal albums... are before the supposed classic period ended. ADToE and DT12 (47% and 58%) do not reach that threshold, while WDaDU and Awake do so pretty confidently (76% and 71%). I'm cheating a little because the only other one to reach any higher actually exceeds that limit, being Train of Thought (96%). Even Black Clouds just scrapes it at 61%.

[TAC]

What are the Enigmachine Metal Detector scores for each album?

[Enigmachine]

WDaDU (76%), IaW (57%), Awake (71%), FII (32%), SfaM (54%), SDoIT (42%), ToT (95%), Octavarium (32%), SC (58%), BC&SL (61%), ADToE (47%), DT12 (58%), TA (42%), D/T (76%).

[Buddyhunter1]

WDaDU (76%), IaW (57%), Awake (71%), FII (32%), SfaM (54%), SDoIT (42%), ToT (95%), Octavarium (32%), SC (58%), BC&SL (61%), ADToE (47%), DT12 (58%), TA (42%), D/T (76%).

Now THIS is quality DTF discourse.

[Dedalus]

WDaDU (76%), IaW (57%), Awake (71%), FII (32%), SfaM (54%), SDoIT (42%), ToT (95%), Octavarium (32%), SC (58%), BC&SL (61%), ADToE (47%), DT12 (58%), TA (42%), D/T (76%).

Now THIS is quality DTF discourse.

Agreed. But I feel that a meticulous description of the methodology is missing. 

[Enigmachine]

This is definitely one of those things that I look back on and am like:

"Man, I must've been bored as hell when I decided to do that."

[rab7]

WDaDU (76%), IaW (57%), Awake (71%), FII (32%), SfaM (54%), SDoIT (42%), ToT (95%), Octavarium (32%), SC (58%), BC&SL (61%), ADToE (47%), DT12 (58%), TA (42%), D/T (76%).

Now THIS is quality DTF discourse.

Agreed. But I feel that a meticulous description of the methodology is missing. 

Based on the ToT score, I'm guessing he assigned a binary score of 1 or 0 where 1=metal and 0 = not metal, and multiplied it by the tracklength, then divided by total album length

[Enigmachine]

Based on the ToT score, I'm guessing he assigned a binary score of 1 or 0 where 1=metal and 0 = not metal, and multiplied it by the tracklength, then divided by total album length

Pretty much. Not a perfect method in terms of how comprehensive it is, but I feel like it generally illustrates the point I'm getting at.

[Buddyhunter1]

We can go even further.

0 points = Not metal in the slightest, not even hard rock
0.25 points = Has some louder moments, but not enough to truly qualify as "metal"
0.5 points = Definitely has metal elements, but they're outweighed by prog or other non-metal elements
0.75 points = Some fully-metal sections, but some extended sections that aren't metal
1 = MEEEHTAL

As I Am: 1
This Dying Soul: 1
Endless Sacrifice: 0.75
Honor Thy Father: 1
Vacant: 0
Stream Of Consciousness: 0.5
In The Name Of God: 1

[Dedalus]

Based on the ToT score, I'm guessing he assigned a binary score of 1 or 0 where 1=metal and 0 = not metal, and multiplied it by the tracklength, then divided by total album length

Pretty much. Not a perfect method in terms of how comprehensive it is, but I feel like it generally illustrates the point I'm getting at.

The dichotomous character of the method can be a problem and generate some distortion. But having a method is better than having none.   

[Enigmachine]

We can go even further.

0 points = Not metal in the slightest, not even hard rock
0.25 points = Has some louder moments, but not enough to truly qualify as "metal"
0.5 points = Definitely has metal elements, but they're outweighed by prog or other non-metal elements
0.75 points = Some fully-metal sections, but some extended sections that aren't metal
1 = MEEEHTAL

As I Am: 1
This Dying Soul: 1
Endless Sacrifice: 0.75
Honor Thy Father: 1
Vacant: 0
Stream Of Consciousness: 0.5
In The Name Of God: 1

Not gonna lie, it'd be interesting to see where that'd lead. Maybe that's material for its own thread.

[BeatriceNB]

We can go even further.

0 points = Not metal in the slightest, not even hard rock
0.25 points = Has some louder moments, but not enough to truly qualify as "metal"
0.5 points = Definitely has metal elements, but they're outweighed by prog or other non-metal elements
0.75 points = Some fully-metal sections, but some extended sections that aren't metal
1 = MEEEHTAL

As I Am: 1
This Dying Soul: 1
Endless Sacrifice: 0.75
Honor Thy Father: 1
Vacant: 0
Stream Of Consciousness: 0.5
In The Name Of God: 1

Not gonna lie, it'd be interesting to see where that'd lead. Maybe that's material for its own thread.

It would lead to discuss what is actually Metal and what it isn't 
I know I myself would argue it 

[Elite]

Sure sounds homogenous, doesn't it?

If you take away the onvious outliers on the Astonishing (which, by the way, still sounds a lot like ‘Dream Theater’), yes.

[erwinrafael]

Just playing the run from Fall Into The Light to Out Of Reach will already give you six songs that have different styles.

[Buddyhunter1]

Not gonna lie, it'd be interesting to see where that'd lead. Maybe that's material for its own thread.

It would lead to discuss what is actually Metal and what it isn't 
I know I myself would argue it 

Totally. It'd be an interesting experiment but there's really no good way to objectively qualify what's "metal" and what isn't; I was just very entertained at the concept of assigning a "metal percentage" to each album and wanted to see how much further that could be taken.

I will say though, I am completely baffled by anyone who argues that SC or BC&SL are heavier or more metal-focused than ToT. ToT is, by a significant margin, their heaviest album due to how unrelenting it is apart from Vacant (which is only two minutes) and SoC (which I'd argue is still heavier than the majority of songs from their first six albums).