SYSTEMATIC CHAOS

I expected a better album but!?It seems like they tried to hard and they sort of failed. I would like to point LaBrie's poor performance almost on every song, like he didn't feel like singing at the time they were recording.With his reputation I really expected better performance.Petrucci pulled of some of cool solos but not as cool as before, it's done only by experience, not by heart.I hate Portnoy's kick drum sound, as if the heads weren't tuned at all(tippical roadrunner sound, do all drummers play on the same drums at roadrunner?)

In the presence of enemies pt. 1 - Until the singing starts it's quite a good tune but it becomes a bit tedious afterwards.

Forsaken - Nice intro riff but the song is really borring

Constant motion - It's not bad but it's to repetetive, sounds like Metallica, Antrax...

The dark eternal night - Interesting riff in the begining, than the stupid distorded vocals(vocal melody is not that bad but the vocal distorsion is a bitt to much).Middle part is tippical "crazy section', especially when clean guitar breaks of from all that distorsion.

The rest is not really worth of commenting.Nice try, but I think that it's to forced. Symphony X blew them away with "Paradise lost"