BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS

Dream Theater ? Black Clouds and Silver Linings 3.5 stars

A nice return to form (sort of).

A new Dream Theater release always stirs a buzz around the progressive rock community. This one turns out be quite decent and my favorite since Train of Thought. Don't be expecting a softer album as this one remains marginally heavy, with some twists that were direly needed.

The first song is good, and Dream Theater seems to have a knack of starting their albums off pretty well, or making it deceiving depending on how you look at it. The first track 'A Nightmare to Remember' has some standard metal riffs and a breakdown that brings back the glory days from 'Images and Words'. Some vocals provided by Mike Portnoy are an absolute blunder and his worst yet, and that does in fact mean a lot.

The AA suite is wrapped up here in a good fashion, taking the best of the previous songs and throwing some original material in between was probably the only correct way of closing it, and it does get the job done.

The Count of Tuscany is also a song to take note of, one of Dream Theater's better epics, that started to build up in numbers after Scenes. Some string sections give this a good effect, but nothing is too different, just composed well I guess.

Other than that you can expect the same modern DT package. Hate to say the song devoted to Mike Portnoy's father 'The Best of Times' didn't grab me at all and while the lyrics are something that anyone would say to their passed father did not translate into a song setting, but a thoughtful thing to do. 'A Rite of Passage' is the single which if not liked, expect another 4 minutes of the same mess. Traditional DT ballad 'Wither' isn't too shabby.

DT fans can be a little surprised here. It's not too shabby of an album.