I imagine this is a topic that has been discussed before (in some shape or form), but hopefully not too recently...
As I was thinking about my Dream Theater albums' rankings, and looking at others', one natural question is how the favorite(s) relate to when/how one has first discovered the band (arguably, that's a discussion that pops up for any band with a longer discography).
Generally speaking, I'd expect some degree of correlation between first album heard (or, perhaps better, heard
as a fan) and favorite - if not album, then maybe "period". It certainly was true for me: my first DT album was I&W - I bought it kind of randomly, in the summer of 1992, because I had read some reviews in magazines raving about it. It completely blew me away. I was relatively "green" to metal in general, so the sound on that record was new to me on many different levels. I&W is, to this day, my favorite DT album. Awake was my first DT album bought as a fan - and it's my second favorite
More generally, if I look at my ranking of DT's discography, it's pretty obvious that I have a strong preference for their "beginnings". And this is true despite the fact that I have been eagerly awaiting any new release (still do!), to this day, and greatly enjoy most of the DT's output.
I'm sure part of it was the "novelty" - the early to mid 90s was such an exciting period for me in terms of discovering music, and sharing the discoveries with friends and buddies at school. So it's not just DT - a lot of the stuff from that period still stands pretty strong among my all-time favorites. But, for DT, I like to think that if I&W came out today, it would probably still blow me away. Thing is, even after I subsequently discovered all the prog “precursors”, i.e. Rush, Marillion, Yes, Kansas etc., that clearly were important influences to this album’s sound (together with the metal component I was already more familiar with), well, I&W still remained one of my favorite albums of all time.
I'm curious to see what the experience was for people here on DTF, as there seem to be significant counterexamples to the first album as fan/favorite album association - both with more "veteran" fans better enjoying the latter part of DT's discography and "greener" fans that prefer the earlier records.
To wit, it'd be interesting to see what the "average distance" is between gateway album and favorite album...