BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS

Well I might as well start my reviews of the DT's with their latest studio CD and the special edition I got has THREE CD's VFM I reckon. Anyway - Dream Theater have produced a five star effort because the last track "The Count of Tuscany" is just pure gold. It's the Rush track that RUSH should have produced some time after Moving Pictures heralded another great band sliding into prog-obscurity by producing a load of commercial horsepoo anyway I digress...The Epic TCOT has a start that gets the hair on your neck a bristling and it's just 20 minutes of technical supremacy allied with great singing...I love the Gates of delirium/Hackettesque slide guitar and the ending is one of my all time favourites in my rather large collection of progressive cd's. What about the rest? The opening track is the weakest (but still 5 bazillion times better than anything on DSOTM - Sorry Floyd fans) but still has a lot of technical metal skills to marvel at. The next "A Rite of passage" I like a lot. especially the opening riff and it's nice metal riffing is interspersed with the more melodic mellotron backed chorus. Yeah this track has a lot to offer. Third up, Wither, starts off a bit like an old Rush track and then it has a bit like an IQ song - can't remember which one, a nice quieter slower track again this is not filler it's a good track. Then the Shattered Fortress and back to metallica with keyboards, but I love the riffing and drumming and the change of speed as it picks up and gets more and more technical, some lovely guitar work by Petrucci....Petrucci - who is vying with Stolte as my favourite axeman at the moment - he hit's the heights in track 5 "The best of times" - with a guitar solo of sublime complexity and effectiveness. Then you have the Count of Tuscany - the drumming is just flawless and that track is the one that takes this CD past 4.5 and into the FIVES.