TRAIN OF THOUGHT

Train of Thought is the seventh studio album from Dream Theater and it might be their most heavy album. Something I as a metal fan should favour but don´t. What I liked about Dream Theater when I started listening to them back when Images & Words were released was that they had lots of heavy elements in their music but mixed them with melodic vocal lines and playing. Kevin Moore had a big part in this sound and I have missed him ever since he left. The albums that have come from Dream Theater after Awake has just gotten worse and worse ( their technique is still astonishing, but the music leaves me cold most of the time). Train of Thought is no exception as it has tons of great riffing and brilliant musicianship but lacks what I dare to call soul.

The album consist of five songs that are more than 10 minutes long. One song that is almost 8 minutes long and a short song that lasts for about 3 minutes. This is as usual you could say. As I am is a pretty straight ( Well as straight as a Dream Theater song gets) and very heavy song, while the next three songs This Dying Soul, Endless Sacrifice and Honor Thy Father are more complex tracks with lots of sections and parts. Vacant is a short little song that seques into the instrumental Stream of Consciousness. The album ends with the very long In the Name of God which is also very complex. There are lots of soloing from both John Petrucci on guitar and Jordan Rudess on keyboards in the songs. The soloing is pretty impressive if you´re only interested in technique but IMO the soloes lack the melodic qualities of the old Dream Theater albums.

The musicianship is as always brilliant. I still can´t enjoy the sounds that Jordan Rudess choses to use though which is a real shame as he is an outstanding musician.

The production from Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci is pretty dark and brutal, which isn´t to my liking. It works fine in some parts but the overall impression isn´t good.

Allthough the quality in the musicianship is excellent and the song quality is good, this album never reaches excellent in my book. I´ll rate it 3 stars because the quality is high even though it´s not an album I listen to very often.