OCTAVARIUM

A longtime Dream Theater fan who comes from a prog background rather than a metal one, this album should have been right up my alley, it being fairly heavy on the prog, but the songwriting on this album is just lacking. The title track is dynamite and easily one of the band's best songs of the Jordan Rudess era, but the rest of the album ranges from merely good (The Root of All Evil and Panic Attack) to boring (These Walls and Sacrificed Sons) to bad (Never Enough). The whole idea being the album is neat, each song being in a different key and everything, but it's just too bad that they didn't write better songs to go along with it.

I often see this album recommended to new fans because of the variety, and they pretty much do throw everything they are about at us but the kitchen sink, but the songwriting, usually a strength of the band's, simply lets them down. The title track is definitely essential, but the rest of the album is not. I would call this one of their two or three least best albums, and on certain days, THE least best.