Sing the chorus of Answering The Call, Sleeping Giant and A Vjee back to back to back then tell us if they sound the same.
I am sitting here and honestly cannot remember the chorus to any of those songs. That is how unmemorable all of them are to me so far. They are not bad, they are just kinda there.
For me so far, Transcending Time and Awaken the Master are the only songs that are really sticking (mostly) from start to finish, and even those are songs I would merely call good. I don't hear anything here that I can imagine some day thinking, "this is one of their best songs ever," and nearly every DT album usually has at least a few of those to me (even DT12 did at first, even if none of them are ones I would now think as one of their best).
The bigger problem is that the album is less than a week old and I am already listening to a bunch of other stuff already. I have already moved on from this new album to other stuff. A new DT album usually dominates my listening time for weeks (or months) after its release.
I am glad some of you are enjoying this a lot, though. 
I'm only a third of the way through at this point (I'll listen to the rest tonight when driving to pick up my stepson) but I relate to this post most of all. I listened to The Alien twice, Answering The Call twice and Invisible Monster once, and I can't sing you one line from any of the three songs. Not one line.
I don't hate it - the instrumental parts are killer and I love the guitar work in The Alien - but this isn't a release like the new Neal Morse Band or Iron Maiden, where I was almost eager to hear it again, as songs ("Bird On A Wire", "Senjutsu") swirled in my head.
My two biggest criticisms are:
- one that is slowly getting more and more relevant with each release, and that is James isn't delivering the big hook anymore; that one vocal line that sticks in your head for days ("Like a scream but sort of silent... Living out my nightmares... VOICES repeating me" or "All that we learn... this time!" or especially "Without love, without truth, there can be no turning back!"). I think James needs to be pushed; I think the melodies and choruses they got when all three - Portnoy, Petrucci and LaBrie - were standing around the mic hammering out something good is something that is missing.
- two, sorry, but Mangini. I get it, he's great, and he's all over this album, but there's busy (good) and there's busy (bad). I'm not a drummer, but I guess I'm a top of kit kind of guy. Bruford, Peart, Collins... I'm guessing it's Mangini's style, not the recording, but there's just so much damn BASS DRUM in the parts that Mangini is playing, and when he does leave the snare it all blends together and it's not musical or supportive of the lead instruments, it just seems intrusive. I'm not sure there's even one point in any of the songs I heard that was as simple and propelling as bum-PAH like you'd hear in Kashmir or something like that. Every part seems to have this staccato 16yth note (I don't know if that's accurate) bass drum attack to it and it's distracting. If I had a dime for every bass note struck across the album I'd be able to pay DT to play in my back yard.
I'll listen to this a couple times again, just because. I'll have an hour in the car tonight to get through the rest and maybe repeat some listening. I have to cut the lawn this weekend so I'll listen to it again there once or twice. But wile I don't expect Dream Theater to recreate the wheel every time - I kind of hope they don't, because what they do well, they REALLY do well - but some of the things they as artists are choosing to bring forward don't, on this release anyway (I kind of liked Distance over Time) are not necessarily the things that attracted me to the band in the beginning.
Topic: *Official* A View from the Top of the World discussion thread (Read 145224 times)