TRAIN OF THOUGHT

This may be considered the last tre album of DT since the next 2 (Octavarium & Chaos contains... well copies of other discs), but let's go to see what is this Train, first of all we see that Portnoy learnt how to make tuuuu-tuuuuuuu with his drums, so we the name train may be intended as his kind of play the percussions, that make someone look at people like Bruford (or even more recent like Harrison (PT) or Peart (Rush)) a kind of aliens... well out of Portnoy that make the drums sound like noises over the music of the other 3 members... we have a great Petrucci that explore new ways of solo guitar and a Rudess that is now solid at his position at keyboards. Myung as ever I forgot about you, dunno why maybe 'cause I cannot hear you here while Petrucci is listening only himself and Portnoy is in frenzy to hit his drums once more (yelling you are a bad drum!!). And now LaBrie, Jimmy was the perfect voice for Metropolis and maybe for the slow ballades of I&W not to make the rapper (Honor Thy Father). Even here the DT perfect and oppressive tecnic is strong and while in tracks like As I Am we got nothing than a strong piece of pure metal (sob, prog is gone), nothing to say since it's perfect for LaBrie voice and fits like the entry in the new DT era (that began with War Inside my Head) in This Dying Soul (they'll make a copy of this on Octavarium, better this I think), we see again a nice track where LaBrie can sing as the earlier DT (too bad for the alteration of his voice in small passages), here is one of the few place where I see Myung. Endless Sacrifice have a nice intro with the first great part of prog music, 5 minutes of old DT, and then back again in the frenzy of drummer (and the first great copy of DT, from Metropolis), the other 6 minutes of the song don't worth the intro with again Petrucci on a solo of his guitar and Portnoy playing alone with the entry of LaBrie at 9:00 or so for the end... a bad one.

I'll skip Honor Thy Father 'cause I hate rap, even a progmetal one with Petrucci playing his guitar, anyway it doesn't worth even the later albums, a complete failure for me. Vacant is the only shining light on this subway of thoughts, the perfect song for LaBrie and a prelude for the Stream of Consciousness, with a dark jazzy piano from Rudess. The Stream (even with his little flaws is a strong instrumental and I like it) begin where Vacant ends with the unic part where Portnoy isn't in frenzy and the only track where Petrucci isn't the main theme of the song, good the part of Rudess here with his breaks on Portnoy train> of drums. In the second part of the song we got a Myung palying his part too. And the end of the disc or maybe the end of this tunnel...14 minutes of song, In the Name of God this as Octavarium (on his own album) is the final suite of music, here the 5 DT play their past music Portnoy is quite and even Petrucci don't take the scene for himself.

Ok what we got here? 4/5 as a full grunge/heavy metal album, 2/5 as prog one...3/5

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