BLACK CLOUDS & SILVER LININGS

Dream Theater's worst album. Bluntly said. The band has completely lost its way. There are a bunch of long tracks on the album, but no refined composition. You can easily take one section from one song and swap it with any other section of another - it doesn't matter. There is no sense and no reason behind this "music" - the album is a bunch of just very well performed instrumentals with a little singing to it. And since Portnoy and Petrucci obviously found their "compositions" - with a little bit of Rudess's stuff thrown in - so valuable they offered them to the public in an instrumental mix. But with or without LaBrie, it doesn't work, although the instrumentals are not quite as painful as the versions with LaBrie. The cover versions are complete unnecessary, imho. Oh, Portnoy plays the drum intro to Stargazer faster than Cozy Powell (R.I.P.) did - go get your medal somewhere, Mike. As bad as the music is - the lyrics are not up to par to even that low level. Especially the lyrics to the last song are embarrassing - there is simply no suspense to that story. As to the whole album.

I consider the time I spent on this album to be wasted. It would need a severe change of mind in the band to get back on the right track, but when I read Portnoy's last interviews I have my doubts. He seems to mistake length for quality... and he is not the first in the prog department to confuse this.

1 star, I'd give it 0 if I could.

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