This album contains the spirit of the music I felt dissipated over time in DT. There's a freshness to the music that seemed to not be there as much when DT signed over to Roadrunner. This album surely ranks up there with the first two LTE albums, but the energy of those two albums carried over to DT world and stayed there until Octavarium imo. After that album, while there have been great moments throughout, and I have a soft spot for BC&SL, to me, musically, the last 6 DT albums have either felt stale/uninspired, overly complex for the sake of it without regard to composition, contain more than one awkward transition in their songs, and/or sound like DT-by-numbers.
LTE3 is none of that. Throw in some JLB vocals on a few of the tunes somewhere, and this is what should have followed up Octavarium.
Funny thing for me is, That is the sound that I felt got stale in Dream Theater, and the sound I was kind of getting tired of hearing, every album had that, oh, here's another LTE inspired type of instrumental.
And what's even funnier, is that LTE 3 has certain sections that are really reminiscent of Systematic Chaos and Black Clouds and Silver Linings...
In Beating The Odds, they basically do a re-do of In The Presence of Enemies Pt. 2 end instrumental section at 2:14, especially MP's drum parts, they sound exactly the same
...and at about 1:30, and 4:30 they do something that reminds me of Ministry of Lost Souls. But the main riff and groove remind me of the "My brother gabriel...music is the gift he brings" part of The Gift of Music.
I wouldn't mind it at all, if MP played Drum Parts that are not reminiscent of those past songs, almost even playing an identical drum pattern for those sections.
But, I do enjoy it a bit. Not as much as the other two, because of this reason that most of these songs sound like Dream Theater songs. And not vice-versa, My favorites are Liquid Evolution and The Keys to The Imagination. Now these are what I wanted to hear from LTE.
Shades of Hope was vastly disappointing to me because it sounds so similar to The Best of Times, and it doesn't have that same impact as Hourglass, State of Grace or Freedom of Speech. I do hear this though in Liquid Evolution...
Rhapsody In Blue is a great cover. I just wish it was relegated to the bonus disk or left off the album completely. This would've left room for another full composition.
I haven't listened to the bonus disk yet, but I am starting to think I may end up enjoying those more than the actual album...
For my first listen ranking it'd go:
1. Liquid Evolution
2. Keys to The Imagination
3. Hypersonic
4. Beating The Odds
5. The Passage of Time
6. Rhapsody In Blue
7. Chris and Kevin's Amazing Odyssey
Edit: I am listening again, and the ITPOE pt.2 sections are also in The Passage of Time as well. And it's due to Portnoys drum patterns being pretty similar.