TRAIN OF THOUGHT

I bought this record year and half ago, and first listenings impressed me. It made me even bigger fan of this prog metal band. Some of my friends, who are fans of classical heavy metal liked it as well. This is where I began to think how this album is actualy one heavy metal experiment of guitarist Petrucci, suported by other guys from team. But I still liked this album. But I got some troubles trying to listen this album in some places that were a bit noisy, and I could not have heard anything at all through headphones. I figured out that it is production that is very weak here. Music is too much bold, and it should have been much better produced. All these riffs from guitar, and very long songs even started to annoy me. This is just not musical level of Dream Theater, that some might have expected before this album. This is very good heavy metal album anyway, but voice of La Brie is awfull in some parts, he simply has problems in singing some higher notes. Guitar and drumms get too much noisy, even too noisy for trash metal acts. Actually this is trash metal album, with guitar that belongs more to eighties heavy metal, than to progressive music. Recent listenings of this record made me feel just like Kevin Moore when he left Dream Theater, I started to hate all this very long and heavy compositions. Heavy keyboards are the worst on album. I think that there should not have been keyboards at all. Rudess is very talented player, but the sound is not his stronger side. These guitar-like keyboards are dissapointing to me. Whole album does not put bad impression on me, I listened to it several times. But there are some parts that are missed here. But also, this album started my negative tensions toward all work of Dream Theater. Now I am really not sure if I can call myself a fan of the band. I believe that James LaBrie should sing more quiet, guitar should be more original and fluid, and keyboards more modern, drumming should be produced better, too. This music on album has free and fluid form, but there is no experimenting anywhere. Songs are more long than interesting.

In my opinion this is first Dream Theater album that is weaker than band's standard. Some of good moments are: guitar solo on »Stream of Conceiousness«, piano in the same track, atmosphere in »Vacant«....