A DRAMATIC TURN OF EVENTS

Honestly, I didn't have very high expectations for this album. With Portnoy leaving and the sub-par quality of their previous album (along with the awful album art), I bought the album expecting it to be passable at best. How wrong I was... After a few listens, like complex music tends to do, the album began to grow on me immensely. A Dramatic Turn of Events shows Dream Theater at a career high in terms of musical complexity and songwriting. The album is certainly metal, but it's less heavy than their previous two albums, focusing instead on (what is this??) emotion in the music again! Not "Another Day" or "Hollow" emotion, but genuine progressive metal emotion more along the lines of Six Degrees. Anyways, A Dramatic Turn of events shows Dream Theater making a strong comeback. The music is top-notch, catchy, complex, progressive metal with plenty of eclectic influences. The music isn't overly worried about being heavy, just being top-tier progressive metal. A Dramatic Turn of Events is on the same level as Dream Theater's classic albums like Metropolis and Six Degrees, and is a welcome return to form from the masters despite losing one of the greatest metal drummers of all time.

Rating: 8/10