OCTAVARIUM

I must admit that this is a better than average Dream Theater disk. While it does have the obligatory schmaltzy Journey-like ballad ("The Answer Lies Within"), and a couple of boring, AOR sounding tunes ("These Walls" and "I Walk Beside You"), the rest of the album is very good, and the title track is actually great.

Although Mike Portnoy tries his best to ruin songs like "Panic Attack" by playing incessantly and maniacally over everything, including what might be a fantastic keyboard solo if we could hear it, the album has quite a bit of high energy interesting prog metal.

"Octavarium" itself is a twenty four minute symphonic prog opus, which starts out like Pink Floyd, and builds to a prog metal frenzy. Good enough to earn a place on my MP3 player.