I must say I was extremely happy when MP left the band way back. I thought, at the time, that the band has reached it´s creative limit - BCASL is one of my least favorites albums from the band. Even FII, altough quite feeble, still has some original ideas here and there.
Anyway, I was over the moon with ADTOE, DT was ok, I loved TA, D/T was very good... but with AVFTTOTW that feeling of "same again" was back, even stronger than before. It was the first album from DT that didn´t make me impressed at all, not even a single song or part of a song. It was very strange, because, you know - big fan. I even started to appreciate BCASL more.
I was dreading the next album already.
So, this is just to say that I think MP back is good news. I think it´s something they needed to do. MM has almost no blame for the way things were going, but I believe that MP could bring some new things to the table - production-wise, in the lyrics, in the compositions.
Now - full circle, you say? Bring Kevin Moore to produce. And Charlie to do backing vocals.