LIQUID TENSION EXPERIMENT 2

Liquid Tension Experiment was a ''side-project'' of Progressive Metal now chart-hitters, Dream Theater, which was led by the drummer, Mike Portnoy. Though its intention, I believe, was not to involve band members besides Mike himself, Liquid Tension Experiment, unfortunately just ended up being an instrumental spin-off of the main band's music.

The music is unmistakably Progressive Metal and the songwriting is extremely reminiscent of the technical show-off side of Dream Theater. The tunes Acid Rain, Biaxident, Another Dimension and When the Water Breaks could have fitted any Dream Theater album contemporary to this. Yes, the band's a bit more loose, you've got a bit more of groove that the band is not usually known-of doing, and there's even a bit of emotional bits, but overall the essence of the music is the same, so are the endless compositions.

Jordan Rudess, admittedly also has more freedom; there's more types of keyboards and a wider variety of styles, but his annoying keyboard tone and style that he'll use with Dream Theater is also here, so that's a let-down. Surely, if you had bought the album in its time you wouldn't have considered this similar to Dream Theater, unfortunately I listened to most of Dream Theater's albums with Rudess before listening to this album, so my initial and main thoughts will always be that this sounds too much like Dream Theater from the 00s.

The main mistake Mike Portnoy did was to involve his band-mate, John Petrucci, in the project, not that he's a bad guitarist but if he have chosen another guitarist that doesn't have to do much with metal, this would have made the project a hell-lot more interesting, just like the Bozzio, Levin & Stevens super-group ended up being, another instrumental/jam band from the time.

As far as how this rates, the music per se is definitely not bad and I think that any Prog Metal fan could enjoy this in the very least. However, I don't consider this by any means superb or really interesting as it could have been, with the exception of Liquid Dream which is something completely fresh and that's what this band should have done, SOMETHING FRESH!

3 stars: probably the best thing, together with Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, that Dream Theater ever did with Jordan Rudess which is not saying much.

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