BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS

I am impressed. The first song grabs me like no other DT song since I cannot remember. Maybe the classic low B of As I Am. The half time refrain riff is classic old DT. It is amazing that as listners we have a DT that we all love and hate. A sign of a brilliant bunch of musicians that can polarize opinions. Petrucci in picking form just does it for me I am afraid. Brilliant stuff. The whole stuff about the "growls". Oh dear get over yourselfs prog wimps. Go back to Jon Anderson singing about fairies. Geez It lasts about 10 seconds. And yes it does not work. I agree. If they are going to growl at least get John Tardy to guest spot. Yes lame all round.

The next track is heavy. It again contains those typical DT melodies. A Rainbow come tech Metal Church vibe. Its all them in the chorus though. Petrucci unleashes a solo that is well out of this world for the first few seconds. The picking Steve Morse lines are impressive.

Wither. It works. Labrie sounds great on these sort of tracks. You always think of Surrounded when you here a DT song like this. Never been bettered.

The Shattered Fortess. Familiar and heavy shit. Keyboard solos are well boring at he best of times. No doubt he is a virtuoso. AA spoken stuff well make of it what you will. The riffing is lame in the later sections. Guitar god goes again. And not much Myung to date.

Piano. Guitar. An uplifting riff and melody. Its the most direct song DT has written for a long time. Even within their precocious trickery they can still almost write a catchy song. It is there for a while but seems to disappear under well their usual stuff. The original power gets lost. And Myung makes an apperance with some glisses. It descends into a DT refrain that is all too familiar and unoriginal. Oh dear a fast solo over a neo-classical progression. Dude we know you can do it. Very disappointing for me.

Tuscany- One of those floating ryhthm section pieces with numerous unison runs then a "thrash" section and vocals. A lot better in its execution than I thought it would be.

This is a great album. It just feels more like a classic DT release. I don't know why.