This was the current release at the time I got into the band, but I heard I&W and Awake first, so yeah it did sound kind of not like DT to me at the time too. I remember not really knowing what to make of it, but I didn’t instantly love it. A few tracks did jump out though, particularly Hollow Years and Hell’s Kitchen. Maybe Lines in the Sand too, I can’t quite remember.
I came back to it a year or so later though, and it really grew on me, to the point where I was kind of disappointed that they abandoned that more melodic classic rock direction when SFAM came out. I still think it's their most mature effort from a songwriting and production perspective. It has two duds in Burning My Soul and Just Let Me Breath, and I also prefer several of the tracks that didn’t make it to the album.
But really I just enjoy that era of songwriting from the band. The circumstances sucked for sure, but it produced some real gems in my opinion. Still some of my very favorite DT songs here (Trial of Tears, Take Away My Pain, Lines in the Sand, Hell’s Kitchen, Speak To Me, The Way It Used to Be, and so on). In retrospect I wish they could have carried on more in that direction as I burned out on the band over the next several albums and they never really got back to this height for me.