TRAIN OF THOUGHT

I consider this their second-best album to date ("Scenes From A Memory" being the best). It is, with the exception of "Vacant," dense and heavy all the way throug, but I find that it adds a sort of power. Like everything else Dream Theater does, this album grows on you with every listen -- I, too, hated it the first time I heard it. The album has its low points - there's an absolutely abominable (but thankfully brief) Linkin Park-style rapping break in "Honor Thy Father" (there's another rapping part in "This Dying Soul" which I don't really mind). Petrucci's solos do drift into the shredding zone occasionally, but this is hardly something worth dismissing the album over -- it will still leave you with that same goofy smile you love seeing on your friends' faces when you introduce them to the band.

LaBrie's voice, meanwhile, has become absolutely incredible -- he's been working hard on it, and it shows. "In The Name of God," the last track, is by far the most powerful song Dream Theater has ever written, being just as heavy as "The Glass Prison" but delivered at a much more deliberate tempo that lets the listener digest every note (except, of course, during the solo section, which is served over a delicious Latin beat, thanks to Portnoy and Myung). Rudess closes the album with a surprisingly effective piano section that nearly ends on a diminished chord, leaving the listener hanging until the final note (which, by the way, was played with his nose).

Don't blow the album off -- it's a gem. Even if you're uncomfortable with Dream Theater as a heavy metal band (a direction that I don't expect them to stay with, by the way), there will still be enough parts where the "old" Dream Theater shines through that the album will be worth the money. And give it a few listens -- there's always something left in the music that you haven't yet discovered.