Metal Reviews

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The two tracks that leaked awhile back haven't astounded me, but I've thoroughly enjoyed them, so I'm gonna get this album. I don't expect to be let down.

Get the special edition 3 CD pack. It has one disc with some awesome cover versions of Rainbow's "Stargazer", Iron Maiden's "To Tame A Land" and Queen's "Tenement Funster - Flick of the Wrist - Lily of the Valley". The other disc is just instrumental versions of the album tracks...a pretty good alternative if you can't stand the vocals.

Excellent stuff, their best for a long while in my opinion.

I'm still amazed at how many albums this has sold so far. Makes no sense, at least in terms of how shitty the musical climate is here in the US.

I also suggest buying the 3CD version.

I can confidently say this is DT's best album since Train Of Thought. Particularly after being a little disappointed with Systematic Chaos, this is a fine return to form for the band. My favorite song is A Nightmare To Remember, but pretty much all six of them are excellent. The Shattered Fortress, in particular, is interesting since it's basically a collage of the other four songs in Portnoy's Alcoholism saga.

Hmmm, The Shattered Fortress is for me the weakest track, because it is indeed only a roundup of the best riffs of the former tracks in this series.

But it's not bad, just only good, while the rest is really great and my favourite tracks are Nightmare to Remember, Rite of Passage and the maybe most beautiful sad song The Best of Times.

BCaSL is IMO the best album since Scenes from a Memory. Because: It is the first DT Album since 10 years, that sounds like Dream Theater... (Whereas Systematic Chaos and Octavarium are coming close behind).

+1

Agree on all fronts.

For me this is DT's best since Six Degrees. Regardless of the tongue-in-cheek lyrics on The Count Of Tuscany, I think it's one of DT's best songs ever.

I agree with Zadok's rating: 90/100

This album is utter crap. Especially for DT standards.

1st. The lyrics are embarrassing.

2nd. I want to hear music, not 7 minutes a song of DT dicking around with their instruments. On Images and Words and SFAM the extended instrumental passages were smart, beautiful, and fitting. Lately on the past two albums it's just the same cliched formula of Rudess' circus keyboards, and Mike Portnoy doing mini drum solos, followed by a synth vs guitar battle. It's really just old. They should try making music, not trying to follow some predesigned archetype that they've made since they fired Moore.

3rd. The experimentation with harsher vocals is just embarrassing. It's not their bag, they aren't Opeth.

Um...what else has there been between the two (not counting live albums?)

Literally just got this in the mail. Just starting "The Shattered Fortress." So far, this is my album of the year... I haven't heard a lot though. I may be jumping the gun, but this is awesome!!!

Am I the only one that has really had it with LaBrie? Images and Words is one of my favorite albums of all time and his voice was amazing on it... I think he remained pretty consistant through to Scenes (even Six Degrees has its moments) but since then I feel like hes collapsing big time, I can barely listen to the last live release as it really sounds like hes just screaming his way through the tracks with very little melody or dynamic, and so far this album is the same. I have to say I agree with Sabs89 on point 2... this album really just sounds too self indulgent (and I think since Train of Thought thats been the norm) with only a few bright spots. A few more listens are needed to really formulate an solid opinion but I am really believing the heart of this band died when Moore left, I&W, Awake and A Change of Seasons are all superb, only Scenes has been a complete album of consistancy since then

Your album of the year? Wow, maybe I'll check it out, you've good taste in music. I know this is going to sound so cliché, but the only DT album I really like is Images and Words.

This is definitely Dream Theater's best album since Train of Thought.
It's just not great musicians wanking on there instruments anymore. the wanking actually serves the song not the other way around.

My Favorite song is The Best of Times, it reminds me of the sound found on Scenes from a memory.

Shattered Fortress is terrible as it's own song. It's the laziest thing they've ever done. All they've done is taken the best riffs from Root of all Evil, This Dying Soul, and The Glass Prison and brought them back into one song. The song itself has practically no original material.

Lol, the wanking does not serve the song. Not when it's as unoriginal as it is. Circus keyboards followed by Rudess vs Petrucci, followed by solo, followed by Portnoy fill. That's the basic gist of every song. This album is not even close to ToT. ToT was the first album to showcase the band's new direction, and at the time was really original. They still knew how to write songs at that point. This album isn't even as good as SC. At least SC had Dark Eternal Night and Constant motion, as well as a short track (Forsaken) that was actually listenable.

I'm convinced. DT may have a lot of chops, but they no longer have the song writing talent to compose a good song under 7 minutes long. And that's because they have very little creativity, and instead try and compensate by wanking their instruments.

They should have never ditched Moore.

What is up with the noobs in this thread

I'm just glad this is the last album with Portnoy's lame alcohol series. Seriously, that should've ended with The Glass Prison. Yeah, This Dying Soul and others are great, but ugh, seriously, I don't care enough that you drank a lot to follow some sort of convoluted series of Prog Rock songs with bad lyrics.

Not really noobs as much as they are people who simply don't post often. DT pulls them out of the woodworks I guess.

Lol, I was wondering the same. And everyone seems to have stupid nicknames. As trapt mentioned, not exactly noobs, just lurkers. I was one of them for a long time.