LIQUID TENSION EXPERIMENT 2

I am not a fan of progressive Metal , however I can appreciate the high level of musicianship that this record has. LTE 2 , in my opinion is an improvement over the first album probably because most of the songs are well composed with only one jam track that is 401.

The record starts with Acid Rain at an incredible pace. Fast , agressive and complex.In this song the interplay between Petrucci & Portnoy stands out. The second track Blaxident is much more quieter and here Jordan Ruddess plays a major role , in addition to that , I think his playing and synth sounds are the best including all his DT albums.This shows mainly on the following track 401 in which due to the absence of Petrucci , his keyboards and Tony Levin's bass take the lead on the tune.

Another Dimension is my favourite track of the album. Here the tune is driven by a synth riff and then has various different sections including accordion and an acoustic guitar. This four tracks have consumed 30 of the 73 minutes this album has , which means that we have more than 40 minutes of music. (To endure)

From now on , the album has 3 tracks with are more than 10 minutes long , there is a lot of good material there. But those tracks could have been edited for a 60 minute album and it would have been for better.

The first one of this tracks is When the water breaks , a 16 minute tune in which there is several mood changes , sometimes you may lose your attention but overall it is a very enjoyable track , featuring a keyboard driven section that reminds me of the Yes Album. The following track is called Chewbacca , I won't say that this is a bad track just for it's name but it's not as strong as the previous tracks because it's really slow and has a middle section that was meant to be spacey , but it's boring instead. Let Amon Duul 2 and Can do that LTE , it's not your thing.

The record , however shows an improvement eith the following one , Liquid dreams. A calm track lead by an acoustic piano that has a jazzy feel , the album closes with a duo by Petrucci & Ruddess called Hourglass , a calm 4 minute closer.

Overall , I would recommend this album to people that's not a prog metal listener and tries to get to this genre for the first time. However it's length may be a problem to many.