'Unnspired' is not really the best word to use. However we can look at the album and find a bunch of very obvious similarities between songs that I think are a bad development in comparison to some of their other work in the past.
One of those is the way James sings vocal lines; I know he's not capable of doing the same thing as on old albums, but compare the vocal lines on (for example) Take the Time and Caught in a Web to the ones you hear on the new record and it's obvious that those on the new album have less ambitus and are sung with less power.
An other example is the way Dream Theater structure their instrumental passages and most notably the solo sections. On previous albums the solo sections would be long, interesting (that's personal preference) journeys, whereas nowadays they'll throw in a circular, repetitive riff to solo over. Usually that riff will have no connection to the rest of the song either. Again, compare the instrumental sections in Metropolis, Beyond this Life, Blind Faith or In the Presence of Enemies (Pt. 2) to those in Answering the Call, Invisible Monster or Transcending Time to get the idea.
Whether or not that's 'uninspired' is not mine to say, but it does make the end result less exciting to me than it could have been, knowing what the band has produced in the past.
I mean at least you frame it as your opinion.
My perspective on this is that a lot of the similarities are tenuous and superficial. They're obvious in the sense that there are
similarities, but this isn't exactly the kind of thing that'd hold up in a plagiarism case if they were a different band (not that I'm saying you said that, but just to drive the main point). When you add up all the stuff that's going on in the compared parts, I think it becomes clear that there's more to the parts than just a reference to the past. Plus, not to beat a dead horse... but after 15 albums (and the other members taking part in a number of other projects) I'd expect some familiar phrases to pop up now and again. I also don't think the odd similar part here and there to past songs is any worse than the overt references to other bands (be it Queensryche, Metallica, U2, Opeth, Muse), where some of them (These Walls to Linkin Park's From the Inside or Never Enough to Muse's Stockholm Syndrome) cut arguably a lot closer. In my mind, if I tolerate hearing Forty Six & Two in Home, I can tolerate hearing a
mild similarity to ITPoE in The Alien, particularly when the whole is still pretty different in both cases.
With the vocals, I'm not really concerned about power because I frankly don't like his ultra-gritty performances on Awake all that much anyway. In my view, his lines on the new album are far more tasteful and evocative, even when the melodies are more unorthodox. Sleeping Giant in particular, which gives off this lush, theatrical vibe to me. I should also re-post what I wrote about The Alien to drive home the point here:
'I do personally have the feeling that stuff that's considered flaws (i.e. the pretty dense and jarring structure and James' melodies) actually complement the theme. In my mind, of course a song about terraforming planets and exploring space in the context of Earth being wrecked is going to have an explorative, yet uneasy and uncertain tension about its progression and that also applies to the vocals that seem to rarely sit on a more singable melody other than the "Our holy grail..." and the "I am the alien..." bits, which feel like moments of acceptance (though not necessarily triumph) among the nervous chaos. For instance, the pretty jagged, hurried melody in the first verse concluding with "Options but a few, we are running out of time" feels very much appropriate. Same with how the part that ends in "...All that you've known left behind" has this kind of obscure, ominous vibe.
The tone keeps switching because in my opinion, a topic like this is pretty complicated and bittersweet (which the ending also musically seems to represent with that ecstatic guitar solo followed by that tense symphonic chordal thing). You've got the seemingly endless possibilities unlocked by technological advancement juxtaposed with the grim realisation that we're escaping our deyaying home planet, which I think is the sort of thing that would spark that sort of inner turmoil represented emotionally by this song (I know I'm kinda repeating myself here, but just to emphasise the point). Given the song's subject matter, I definitely can understand why the vocal melodies aren't typically hooky in the vein of The Enemy Inside or Untethered Angel, which feature more grounded, relatable topics and the melodies seem to reflect their own themes in that regard, too. However, I also think the melodies, while not accessible, are filled with intent and purpose all the same, though I appreciate that this is something down to personal interpretation.'
James is of course limited by his age, but I think he works within those limitations wonderfully to deliver a performance that doesn't just go for catchy melodies, but fitting them and the delivery to the themes of the music. A song like Transcending Time also deeply moves me with what I see as a highly mature and sensitive performance (I also think it's understated just how poetic the TT lyrics are for modern JP as well) that I'd take any day over something like Caught in a Web.
The part about instrumental sections feels like confirmation bias as well, because they've always kinda had this mix of jam-based instrumental sections with more composed sections. Hell, Beyond This Life I'd say is far more "throw in a circular, repetitive riff to solo over" (perhaps even as circular as it gets arguably) than something like Sleeping Giant or the epic. All BTL does is introduce a riff after a while, repeat the pattern a few times, then the unisons. Fatal Tragedy has something like this too. Hell, that one doesn't really have any connection to the rest of the song either. I'm not saying this to say these are bad sections either, but that the phenomenon that you're pointing out isn't really exclusive to modern DT and that I think there are a lot of notable exceptions.
I personally think "it sounds uninspired" is a perfectly reasonable critique to make. To imply that an artist will always be bursting at the seems with energy and creativity, especially when this is a business, is just not realistic. There will be times when the members of Dream Theater will be 100% inspired and times when they may not be. That is just human nature and is the same for every band and every artist throughout time.
Except it isn't. It lacks any actual substace as a criticism. The thing is, music can't "sound uninspired" and it's not really something you can quantify (at least without it being a synonym for simply "music I do not like"). Again, something like cohesion can have common reference points, even if it's still a subjective judgement.
Another problem here is that the level of inspiration is just being
assumed, when you most likely do not know how the artist felt while writing or how the process went. If we look at the external clues beyond simply enjoying the album or not, then A View would be a far more "inspired" album than Awake and The Astonishing would be one of JP's most inspired works, but I get the feeling that a lot of the people using that word for the new album aren't looking at it in that way. Often it's literally just guess-work in spite of excuberance and energy on the part of the band, so I'm not sure it's really all that reasonable.
I should also mention that generally, being uninspired musically... means not writing anything. From what I remember from people who have seen the band write in the last two decades or so from the outside (like Jimmy T), whether it's Systematic Chaos or the new album, seem to note how quickly the ideas fly out there as well as how they develop and refine those ideas just as fast. When you've got that much instrumental talent in a room, it's very unlikely that ideas aren't going to happen because even if JP suddenly has a bad day, you've still got 3 instrumentalists that are bouncing around ideas (albeit at differing rates).
I don't think its an insult... I think it's an acknowledgement of human nature. If something comes off as lazy songwriting to me I don't think it means "I don't like the band anymore". It just means I know they are capable of better as I have heard them make more creative choices.
Correction: "It just means I know they are capable of catering to my personal tastes more."
Hours of thought and refinement could've gone into an idea that you might think is uninspired and something you think was genius could've been something that the band considered not even releasing. This is exactly the issue a lot of us have with the words "uninspired" or "uncreative".
Topic: Is DT truly "uninspired?" (Read 10363 times)
