BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS

Dream Theater is (one of the) greatest(s) Prog Metal bands ever, and that is the only thing holding this album back. Everything is there, from great melodies and expert musicians rocking out, the thing is, this is one of the worst Dream Theater albums ever.

From the terribly weak All Nightmare Long, to the awesome Count of Tuscany, this albums keeps the fans doing what it has been doing since Train of Tought, it gives people a taste of how amazing this band can be, except that they are not at all amazing during the 70 minute album

The new single "A Rite Of Passage" is actually a good representative of the album, it just shows that Dream Theater is gravitating each time more towards their metal part, and leaving their prog roots, the only thing remotely close progressive rock found in this album are some sections of the longer songs that have some space rock influences, with long solos and notes sustaining forever

If this review is starting to sound unfavorable, it's not, i actually liked it, a lot, but it's just as i said, it could have been much more

i believe that most people will find The Count Of Tuscany as the best song in the new album, another very honorable mention goes to Shattered Fortress, the end of the AA saga that has been on development during the last 5 albums, as it is an awesome song on its own, even if it is almost entirely made out of parts of the other songs (Fun fact: i sang along during my first hearing of the song, and almost got the lyrics right!)

In the end, the whole thing just made me put the Awake album and listen to some fantastic prog metal and reminisce times that Dream Theater were a band, and not a duo, but every now and then i give a listen to it, and it doesn't disappoint me a bit