BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS

This is a preliminary review based on exactly one listen through disks 1 and 2, and can be summed up as "more of same". Dream Theater needs a new direction. I'm sure if I listen to this a bunch more times I'll start to pick out more interesting bits here and there, and it will start to take on a personality of its own. But the first time through the grunge sounds a lot the same, the shredding sounds mostly the same, and progressions and passages sounded recycled. The lyrics in particular sounded like someone put the rhyming couplets for all the albums since DT's "return to metal" after Millenium in a hat, stirred, and seeded the new effort's songs with what came out. (Exercise for the reader: List Labrie's ten favorite theme words. It shouldn't take long.)

It's not that it wasn't interesting, more like the band's palette has been trimmed to the top ten colors voted for by die-hard fans. But, full disclosure, I heard this through a rented PT Cruiser "sound system" while negotiating Labor Day traffic. When I get time to give it a ride on headphones, I may change my mind completely.

And, by the way, I thought the violin sounded like Jean Luc Ponty - interesting to know now that it was our old friend Jerry Goodman.

Overall, not bad, but so far nothing at all special. Some of the older songs give me chills, but nothing on this one did. Yet.