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

[rab7]

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

You ain't kidding

Fall into the light - thrashy
BW -proggy and melodic
R137 - heavy and swingy
S2N - groovy
AWE - proggy and heavy, relentless, beautiful
OOR - basic ballad

[jayvee3]

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.

From the dictionary:
Popular: liked or admired by many people or by a particular person or group. Are you sure it’s everyone else mixing up the terms? Perhaps “polarising”, “divisive” or even “most discussed” would be better suited?

In any case, I don’t agree at all that the new albums don’t explore new sound, sound different enough etc. To me, TOT through Black Clouds had some real “mailing it in“ moments. Even TOT which is ok, has some songs like Endless Sacrifice and In the Name of God, which I like enough, but could have been 2-3 mins shorter each with better impact. Things from here felt like they were getting long for the sake of it. DoT was far more refined, with so much bang for buck in the tracks, and it gets far more listens from me than any of that TOT-BCASL era of albums.

Not to mention the Astonishing. Like it or hate it, it was controversial for the exact reason that it was unlike anything they had ever done. Personally, I would take the last 4 MM era albums over the previous 4 (TOT, 8V, SC, BCASL) in an absolute canter, but to each their own…

The other thing is that - is it essential that every album or track breaks new ground? After over 30 years and 15 studio albums, isn’t it OK to try a few different things, but also nail down your core sound? Like someone just posted, look at some of the variety in the DoT songs alone. But can’t the band after all this time just make some cool sounding songs that have some of the signatures we’ve all come to know them for? To me, I just appreciate they are the ages they are and still making albums of such high quality.

[jammindude]

I’m always torn on that line of reasoning because I tend to gravitate towards bands that always do something very different.

I think it was Alex Lifeson who, in speaking about the style change from MP to Signals, said something along the lines of “as soon as we felt like we had succeeded at a certain sound, we immediately knew it was time to do something else.” (I’m paraphrasing from memory, but it was something like that.)

That’s why I LOVE Rush. Because the S/T sounds like a completely different band than 2112, which sounds like a totally different band than Moving Pictures, which sounded like a totally different band than Power Windows, which sounded like a totally different band than Clockwork Angels.

Haken is another one. Visions felt like a pure DT homage album, so for the next album they knocked it out of the park doing something completely different…which was subsequently followed up by something that bordered on alienating fans of the previous two albums.

I still love Pain of Salvation because their “core sound” keeps shifting around to the point that I don’t know that they have a “core sound” anymore beyond the label of “interesting”

And I’ve only just started to get into King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard who have done a thrash album, and a psychedelic pop album (along with a handful of other genres)…not having a “core sound” makes it more interesting somehow.

[Tony From Long Island]

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.

Perhaps it's because I generally am not a fan of Prog.  I Like DT and Rush.    Maybe that's why I was drawn to this more simpler song.  If I had to pick a few other favorites off the top of my head I might go with

Under A Glass Moon
6:00
As I Am
Home
Forsaken
The Root of All Evil
Learning To Live

[JRuless]

This thread is officially in for the 'most derailed topic in the history of DTF'award

[DoctorAction]

I only play The Root Of All Evil, I Walk Beside You and Octavarium from that record but those are superb tracks.

I LOVE IWBY.

[Kotowboy]

The first 4 songs on Octavarium are not too hard on drums !

[Enigmachine]

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).

Yeah, fair point actually. The concept of "metal-ness" is defo one of those things that has a few blurred lines.

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

I mean, I don't know. Even if I took away The Astonishing from that list... that leaves us with 17 different styles I listed. I even forgot a few, like the way they play with ambient music on Behind the Veil and Illumination Theory. Good luck even getting most prog bands (particularly those on the more metal end) to cover elements of over a dozen different styles over four albums. Bands like Haken, Between the Buried and Me and Native Construct that actually manage to do that while maintaining a significant audience are quite a rare breed. I would also propose that the diversions sounding like Dream Theater kind of means that the integration is working. If you're able to blend all of those elements in a way that it's still identifiable as you, then you've done a good job it making it all your own rather than just imitating.

Let's take Scenes as a reference point, it has acoustic / piano balladry (Regression, Through My Words), melodic prog metal (Strange Deja Vu), gospel / spiritual music (The Spirit Carries On, which I also missed as an element for The Bigger Picture and possibly This is the Life), ragtime (The Dance of Eternity... for like a few seconds), more kinda middle eastern vibes (Home, though also forgot for Lost Not Forgotten and Outcry), kinda... modern RnB ballad type stuff in the vein of Sade or someting (Through Her Eyes), jazz fusion style workouts (Beyond This Life), bits of musical theatre (Fatal Tragedy, One Last Time and Finally Free), a bit of bluesy hard rock in the vein of Deep Purple (the verse after the first solo in Beyond This Life) and prog rock (Finally Free).

Give this to someone who knows the band from Images alone and I'd still bet they'd feel like it sounds like Dream Theater, even as it switches between around 10 styles. From my estimation too, DT12 (an album that tends to be regarded as having a bit less variety than usual, from what I can tell), still hosts around 7 fairly concrete different styles (which ADToE also roughly has, give or take a few), which even classifies metal as a singular one. If I acknowledged the kind of variety that metal has in its subgenres, then it'd be even more.

I wonder if it's just that DT's modern brand of eclecticism tends to blend styles within the tracks (like the acoustic break in Fall Into the Light or the ambient / film score intro to Behind the Veil) and not necessarily always dedicate full tracks to stuff outside their usual stylistic centre. I still don't think that discounts the variety that's there though and hardly makes things homogenous when put in perspective. I think the only way DT might seem that way is if someone is going in with the expectation of Queen, King Crimson or The Beatles where depending on the album, each song almost sounds like a different band. Even in the 90s, that didn't really happen to that degree. Falling Into Infinity has a firmly identifiable sound to it from tracks like New Milennium, Lines in the Sand and Just Let Me Breathe affirming that.

Even from a bird's eye view, not thinking in terms of small scale genre integration, I don't think it can reasonably be said that DT have coasted on the same kind of album either... unless "same kind of album" literally means "progressive metal that is identifiable as Dream Theater". ADToE was a highly dynamic album with a very natural ebb and flow and vast song structures, DT12 tightened the lengths to deliver hookier tracks with an increased highlighting of symphonic and grandiose elments, TA went pretty much fully into musical theatre territory and D/T zeroed in on a more stripped down and aggressive sound that had a lot of more harmonically tense / edgier content.

[Kocak]

Part of me was hoping that the band would go for an outside producer for this album to mix things up a little bit.

[Max Kuehnau]

Part of me was hoping that the band would go for an outside producer for this album to mix things up a little bit.

while not an outside producer strictly speaking, I'm sure Andy Sneap did just that.

[Kocak]

Part of me was hoping that the band would go for an outside producer for this album to mix things up a little bit.

while not an outside producer strictly speaking, I'm sure Andy Sneap did just that.

They used him for mixing and mastering, not production during the writing etc.

[Enigmachine]

I don't know why there's this assumption an outside producer by default would result in an album that caters towards the tastes of those requesting it. At the end of the day, it's just another voice. Some producers are more hands-on than others and there could easily be a situation in which the producer is basically no more than an advisor. If I remember correctly, the reason why the band liked working with John Purdell and Duane Baron was in part because they let the band do what they wanted. By the same token... the fact that there wasn't really a clear-cut leader (or leaders) of DT back then led to tensions that I think they're glad to put behind them. Having a sense of comfort in the process can actually lead to being more willing to create more ambitious, risk-taking material. Not to mention, DT would have leverage in who they'd pick as the outside producer to begin with, so the option would likely be one that shared their vision to begin with, if they felt like they absolutely had to.

Also, John Petrucci might steer the ship, but it's not like he isn't open to suggestions from other people, with numerous examples of major changes being suggested by other people, like The Enemy Inside being moved to a post-intro opener from a mid album track from a label executive's suggestion or Beneath the Surface being encouraged to be an album track by Rena. It also hasn't stopped the band from "mixing things up", given The Astonishing being a thing. Whether one likes it or not, it's certainly different. D/T then pulled things in the opposite direction, itself also quite different from ADToE and DT12 in how it's a lot more to-the-point and aggressive, also changing the mixer to someone who has been more well received. I don't really know what people expect at this stage.

[Kotowboy]

I think people think that " outside producer " will magically mean Images And Words part 2.

Or the greatest drum sound in DT history...

[KevShmev]

The advantage of an outside producer is they can often get artists to think outside the box and get then to try things that they might not on their own. 

[Kocak]

The advantage of an outside producer is they can often get artists to think outside the box and get then to try things that they might not on their own.

Precisely this.

[lucasembarbosa]

Part of me was hoping that the band would go for an outside producer for this album to mix things up a little bit.

while not an outside producer strictly speaking, I'm sure Andy Sneap did just that.

Jimmy T might have played that role as he was there since the beginning of the writing sessions and is credited for engineering the album and additional production.

[gzarruk]

The advantage of an outside producer is they can often get artists to think outside the box and get then to try things that they might not on their own.

Precisely this.

And they're also not personally attached to the music, so they can listen with fresh ears and bring an unbiased opinion as to how things sound/work for the songs.

[Kotowboy]

In Theory that's what Rick Ruin does. He drops by the bands studio once a month or so and can get a fresh take on it.

In practice - he just turns up - says YES or NO - then distorts the shit out of it then fucks off again.


Rick Ruin didn't produce Death magnetic - Greg Fidelman did. Rick just takes all the credit for basically saying " write like when you were good see you in a month ".


Corey taylor said he'll never work with rick again cause he's just never there.

[gzarruk]

Rick Ruin

[MirrorMask]

The advantage of an outside producer is they can often get artists to think outside the box and get then to try things that they might not on their own.

Precisely this.

And they're also not personally attached to the music, so they can listen with fresh ears and bring an unbiased opinion as to how things sound/work for the songs.

Remember the infamous debate about what to do with the DAY AFTER DAY AND NIGHT AFTER NIGHT part, where Portnoy posted on his forum the various ideas they had? that was precisely a producer's job, to suggest them the best approach for that section (whatever that would have been).

[darkshade]

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. 

To be more precise, it's that modern metal sound they've been doing since literally Systematic Chaos that I'm talking about. The last 6 albums vary from each other in that regard, the band still obviously have a diverse pallette even in the Mangini era, but I'd call them all more metal albums than the first 8 (sans ToT, but that album is also a different kind of metal, just like WDaDU is often 80s hair metal meets Rush)

IaW is metallic progressive music with production values reflecting the time it was recorded.
Awake is heavier and more metal than previous album, but there is tons of lighter (and jazzier!) moments, and still metallic progressive music.
FII is lighter again, more than IaW, but now has really good, timeless production values (though I like IaW's production)
SFAM is heavier again, but no more metal than Awake. Production is 'meh' but not bad for JP and MP's first time.
SDoIT is not really any heavier than SFAM, except TGP. Production is pretty good again.
ToT is heaviness cranked up, an album of Glass Prisons, essentially, pushing the nu metal + thrash sound. Production is perfect for what they did here.
Octavarium much lighter, I'd argue their lightest album, the least metal album besides FII.

From here forward, the heaviness or metal element is the dominant sound, always present, it's a matter of degree. The production values reflect that as well, sounding like the band wants to stay current with other heavy music, but there are also some very mixed and questionable production choices as well.

The only real exception to this, to me, is BC&SL, particularly the back half of the album, but I think the whole album kicks ass. It's varied, covers a lot of musical ground, and while it may be a little clunky on a few occasions, and most of the vocal melodies often double what the other instruments are playing, I thought it was a return to form for them, a big improvement over Systematic Chaos. When ADTOE came out, I thought it was great, and I still think it's the best Mangini era album, but each album has been disappointing for me since. This might be because ADTOE was the album where they were more concerned with proving they could still put out a killer album without Portnoy. While I find some of the album to be calling back to former glories like IaW and other 90s DT elements, it's both the least formulaic "normal" DT album in the Mangini era.

[evilasiojr]

I think it's healthy for a band to work with an outside producer when you already have a very stablished sound. Maybe do it occasionally and self produce most of the time.

[TheBarstoolWarrior]

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. 

To be more precise, it's that modern metal sound they've been doing since literally Systematic Chaos that I'm talking about. The last 6 albums vary from each other in that regard, the band still obviously have a diverse pallette even in the Mangini era, but I'd call them all more metal albums than the first 8 (sans ToT, but that album is also a different kind of metal, just like WDaDU is often 80s hair metal meets Rush)

IaW is metallic progressive music with production values reflecting the time it was recorded.
Awake is heavier and more metal than previous album, but there is tons of lighter (and jazzier!) moments, and still metallic progressive music.
FII is lighter again, more than IaW, but now has really good, timeless production values (though I like IaW's production)
SFAM is heavier again, but no more metal than Awake. Production is 'meh' but not bad for JP and MP's first time.
SDoIT is not really any heavier than SFAM, except TGP. Production is pretty good again.
ToT is heaviness cranked up, an album of Glass Prisons, essentially, pushing the nu metal + thrash sound. Production is perfect for what they did here.
Octavarium much lighter, I'd argue their lightest album, the least metal album besides FII.

From here forward, the heaviness or metal element is the dominant sound, always present, it's a matter of degree. The production values reflect that as well, sounding like the band wants to stay current with other heavy music, but there are also some very mixed and questionable production choices as well.

The only real exception to this, to me, is BC&SL, particularly the back half of the album, but I think the whole album kicks ass. It's varied, covers a lot of musical ground, and while it may be a little clunky on a few occasions, and most of the vocal melodies often double what the other instruments are playing, I thought it was a return to form for them, a big improvement over Systematic Chaos. When ADTOE came out, I thought it was great, and I still think it's the best Mangini era album, but each album has been disappointing for me since. This might be because ADTOE was the album where they were more concerned with proving they could still put out a killer album without Portnoy. While I find some of the album to be calling back to former glories like IaW and other 90s DT elements, it's both the least formulaic "normal" DT album in the Mangini era.

Because of that it's actually arguably the most formulaic of the Mangini era albums. In none of the following three albums can one say 'the resemblance between this album and this prior album is uncanny'.

I also find ADTOE to be the best, but I recall the biggest complaint about it (besides just 'no more MP') was how closely the songs resembled I&W.

[darkshade]

The songs don't resemble IaW to me. The track list order has some similarities in some ways, and maybe the opener OTBOA has some similarities in its structure to Pull Me Under.

Other than that, the compositions themselves are way more interesting to me than most songs on the last 3 albums. The album flows very well, which I can't say for the last 3 albums either. The production on ADTOE doesn't bother me so much as long as I can turn the volume up really loud.

[TheBarstoolWarrior]

The songs don't resemble IaW to me. The track list order has some similarities in some ways, and maybe the opener OTBOA has some similarities in its structure to Pull Me Under.

Other than that, the compositions themselves are way more interesting to me than most songs on the last 3 albums. The album flows very well, which I can't say for the last 3 albums either. The production on ADTOE doesn't bother me so much as long as I can turn the volume up really loud.

I mean...yes ATBOA but also LNF is pretty obviously similar to UAGM and BAI to LTL

[Glasser]

Rick Ruin

Rick “Ruin”! I LOVE it!!!!

[darkshade]

The songs don't resemble IaW to me. The track list order has some similarities in some ways, and maybe the opener OTBOA has some similarities in its structure to Pull Me Under.

Other than that, the compositions themselves are way more interesting to me than most songs on the last 3 albums. The album flows very well, which I can't say for the last 3 albums either. The production on ADTOE doesn't bother me so much as long as I can turn the volume up really loud.

I mean...yes ATBOA but also LNF is pretty obviously similar to UAGM and BAI to LTL

The lead in to BAI and maybe the intro to BAI is like Wait for Sleep into LTL, Outcry is the Metropolis Pt 1 of the album, I've heard em all.

There are a lot of differences. I think they were surely looking at IaW for inspiration, maybe Scenes as well, but they certainly didn't replicate any of those songs note for note.

However, these details do keep me from putting ADTOE above most other MP-era DT albums because of its lack of originality. The playing is what keeps it's strong.

[Enigmachine]

To be more precise, it's that modern metal sound they've been doing since literally Systematic Chaos that I'm talking about. The last 6 albums vary from each other in that regard, the band still obviously have a diverse pallette even in the Mangini era, but I'd call them all more metal albums than the first 8 (sans ToT, but that album is also a different kind of metal, just like WDaDU is often 80s hair metal meets Rush)

But... that's an arbitrary distinction imo because I don't think one can really say that Fall Into the Light and On the Backs of Angels are any more modern in style than The Glass Prison or Home. Systematic Chaos wasn't really new in that regard, because I wouldn't say that The Dark Eternal Night is a million miles away from This Dying Soul or In the Name of God either. Is ToT really a "different kind of metal"? At that point, you might as well say D/T is a different kind of metal from ADToE and DT12, because it's just as technically justifiable. The opening riff of This Dying Soul wouldn't be out of place on Distance Over Time after all, as there's already a pretty similar riff in At Wit's End. Also... no, The Astonishing isn't more metal than Awake, WDaDU or SfaM. You'd have to do a lot of semantic gymnastics to make that claim work, to say the least. I'm also sure the people who dismiss it for its relative lack of metal would be happy to learn that it's more metal than the first six albums.

IaW is metallic progressive music with production values reflecting the time it was recorded.
Awake is heavier and more metal than previous album, but there is tons of lighter (and jazzier!) moments, and still metallic progressive music.

"Metallic progressive music"

If only there was a word for this...

FII is lighter again, more than IaW, but now has really good, timeless production values (though I like IaW's production)
SFAM is heavier again, but no more metal than Awake. Production is 'meh' but not bad for JP and MP's first time.
SDoIT is not really any heavier than SFAM, except TGP. Production is pretty good again.
ToT is heaviness cranked up, an album of Glass Prisons, essentially, pushing the nu metal + thrash sound. Production is perfect for what they did here.

So, possibly controversial opinion here (less to rebut and more to just offer my own perspective on this, having spent 4 years studying mixing in a fair amount of detail, though would by no means call myself an expert):

Am I the only one who doesn't get the appeal of Kevin Shirley's mixes? The three factors that I feel identify them are mud, compression and a certain flatness. I think they sound fine in mellower moments like Hollow Years (even if I think James' vocals sound way too muffled on the album as a whole) and the first few minutes of Blind Faith. However, MP's snare at its loudest tends to be like half-way towards the kind of nauseating ringing (admittedly somewhat of a contemporary staple in a lot of alt rock / nu metal / alt metal at the time, possibly in part because that was when the loudness war really started kicking in, but I could be wrong) that defines the St Anger snare and the kick is compressed to the point of clipping in all of these. Today, I put Six Degrees up against the Apple Music master of Distance Over Time and... the latter smoked the former. Far more space and clarity, no clipping and a real sense of weight and punchiness. It was like going from two dimensions to three. Even Images and Words, despite its dated qualities, really benefits from the extra dynamics, separation and ambience that might put it over any Shirley mix imo.

From here forward, the heaviness or metal element is the dominant sound, always present, it's a matter of degree. The production values reflect that as well, sounding like the band wants to stay current with other heavy music, but there are also some very mixed and questionable production choices as well.

While I agree with this in a vacuum, I feel like it again ignores just how metallic the early albums were as well. I've seen you bring up how moments like DO's initial chord makes the album pretty much an album that has metal as its dominant force... the exact same thing could be said of the first three albums. John Petrucci's tone on I&W and Awake was extremely... Metallica. It's that hyper aggressive, crunching scoop that then warmed to a much more rockish tone with more prominent mids by the time of FII. Put a power chord of the former with MP's very sharp, cutting kick sound in either of the former albums and you've got yourself some metal... if we're going by your own standards and not just acknowledging this for modern metal. I will grant that Shirley's, as well as Michael Brauer's, sound does indeed imply a more rock feeling. If Six Degrees or Train of Thought was mixed by Ben Grosse or Andy Sneap, I suspect that your impression wouldn't be the same.

While I find some of the album to be calling back to former glories like IaW and other 90s DT elements, it's both the least formulaic "normal" DT album in the Mangini era.

I also have to really question how it's the "least formulaic", how that even goes about being defined as well as how DT12 and D/T are any more formulaic. Is it because the songs are shorter and map on a bit more reliably to more typical song structures? It wouldn't really entirely true though, because stuff like The Bigger Picture, At Wit's End and Barstool Warrior start with relatively traditional structures which they then defy in their second half, Surrender to Reason and S2N are all over the place despite having choruses and Illumination Theory and Pale Blue Dot have the more "song" elements being less important than the general flow of the track, despite being present. If it's the kind of tracks on offer, then idk how having two instrumentals, with one being a symphonic introduction to the album, is an adherence to a common formula for the band. I could go on for quite a while about how a lot of these tracks don't really map onto what might be thought of as generic / formulaic territory, but I'd imagine this tangent is already going a bit far.

I wouldn't argue that much with ADToE having very smooth pacing, though I wouldn't say that it's to the detriment of DT12 or D/T either. The latter has a shorter length to compensate for its consistently higher level of intensity and the former tends to be a lot more dramatic and sudden with its dynamic shifts, but that doesn't make the pacing inherently bad. The shifts still seem appropriately to help the listener breathe. I'd imagine this would probably come off better with the Apple Music version of the mix that's less compressed, however. I would say that pacing is generally one of the band's greatest strengths, last 3 albums very much included. Hell, why praise of it is at the detriment of other albums in this context, I'm not really sure.

Regardless, we should probably drop this now. I will admit it's getting kind of tiring to argue this and it seems to have been a good few pages since this thread has resembled the topic.

[LKap13]

Glasser, and others who've heard the album, did you like the production of the new album?

[Kocak]

In Theory that's what Rick Ruin does. He drops by the bands studio once a month or so and can get a fresh take on it.

In practice - he just turns up - says YES or NO - then distorts the shit out of it then fucks off again.


Rick Ruin didn't produce Death magnetic - Greg Fidelman did. Rick just takes all the credit for basically saying " write like when you were good see you in a month ".


Corey taylor said he'll never work with rick again cause he's just never there.

There are many approaches to production. Mr. Ruin has a rather ruin it yourself approach, I reckon. Each to their own. I produce records myself, for bands or individual artists and my approach differs greatly.

[Glasser]

Glasser, and others who've heard the album, did you like the production of the new album?

Sneap CRUSHED it! It’s PERFECT and I rarely use that word.

[TAC]

Glasser, and others who've heard the album, did you like the production of the new album?

Sneap CRUSHED it! It’s PERFECT and I rarely use that word.

Really? I say CRUSHED all the time..

[Glasser]

Glasser, and others who've heard the album, did you like the production of the new album?

Sneap CRUSHED it! It’s PERFECT and I rarely use that word.

Really? I say CRUSHED all the time..

I don’t believe you. Use CRUSHED in a sentence please.

[TAC]

I bought a PERFECT can of CRUSHED tomatoes.

[Glasser]

I bought a PERFECT can of CRUSHED tomatoes.

Well, I bought 2 CRUSHED cans of PERFECT tomatoes.