What does it even mean when you say-- with or without saying-- that an album is uninspired but another album is?
Inspired=fresh, feels like maximum effort went into it, pushing the envelope etc…
It doesn’t mean I’m correct on when they were or weren’t inspired. It’s just how it comes off to me.
It also makes sense for a band with 15 albums to have times of maximum inspiration and times of creative roadblocks. No matter how great that band is.
But what was so fresh about ToT? The band merely shifted the weighting of the metal vs prog elements of their sound towards metal. It was the band's heaviest album, but JP's riffs didn't push the envelope for him as a player in any way. The long instrumental sections sound like they're from the same cloth as the ones we hear today, no?
Also, given the record short turnaround time for ToT, how do you think about the amount of effort they put in vs. DT15 which took much longer if I am not mistaken? seems that ToT may have required less effort.
TOT was freshing compared to previous discography (if you want to be quite a bitter analyst, you can tell they took Glass Prison and did an entire album in that vibe - except Vacant....but still, it was unprecedented as an albun).
But still...in terms of wankery virtuosity, it's not that different from what we hear on this album, except for the obviousness that came almost 20 years earlier. But that doesn't change the fact that JR's absolutely nonsensical solos in This Dying Soul are there.
For me it doesn't make sense to exalt the wankery of that record and condemn this one (as I see some comments here). Personally I don't like TOT, I don't like LTE and I'm not a big fan of the approach JP/JR had on the new record.
At least the new record has more to offer me than the other examples.