ADTOE appreciation thread

[Volante99]

Agreed, still easily the best MM era and a top 5 for the band. Breaking All Illusions is a quintessential DT track and the album contains the best ballads they’ve ever done (or at the very least since Kevin Moore left). Jordan is arguably the star of the album and his playing compliments the band more consistently here than anywhere else in his time with the band.

The songs are deep, complex, and inventive. The album has a lot for the listener to sink their teeth into without being overlong or overbearing.

With the exception of the limp drum sounds I’ve actually come to appreciate the dry, “raw” production/ compared to the squeaky clean sound of day Astonishing, for example.

[darkshade]

Call me crazy, but it feels in really poor taste to constantly post "this is what it would sound like if Portnoy had played on it" crap, especially in what is supposed to be an appreciation thread.  Because nothing screams appreciation like, "here is what it would have sounded like if the original drummer had played on it," by linking to a copycat nobody who mimics his style.

If someone re-recorded all the Rudess DT albums with Kevin Moore styled keyboard sounds and playing, they'd probably replace the actual albums for me.
Though that would be harder, as Rudess has his stamp on a lot of the material he was a part of. Moore would probably never have allowed a lot of the superfluous stuff since SFAM to happen under his watch.

The guy playing the "What if Portnoy" stuff overplays and kind of exaggerates what MP would actually play.

[bobzor]

It was definitely a big step up from Black Clouds, which in my opinion is probably the weakest album they've ever made. For some reason I tend to not visit the Mangini albums that often, but I actually like this new era quite a bit. Some songs are pretty meh, but for me every DT record has some weak moments, so it's no different with these. But the last two Portnoy albums were pretty much 50% great stuff and 50% total garbage, so for me it's been upwards in quality for the last 10 years.