TRAIN OF THOUGHT

When I first heard this album, I thought, 'wow, what a piece of crap. Maybe it'll grow on me.' To this day I remain dissappointed.

This is where most people claim that DT really went metal... I'm actually more of a metal-head than a prog fan and I can say that although this is metal, this is a poor example of it. And the 'metal' aspects of it aren't the problem.

I seriously think that this album was inspired by and trying to 'emulate' horrible nu-metal bands like Korn or Disturbed. The lyrics are about as mature too... where's Kevin Moore when you need him (is that all I talk about?)?

Without further delay, track by track:

1-As I Am: One of the less-terrible tracks on the album, but the music isn't interesting and the lyrics are painfully angsty. The vocals are catchy, but all in all it's very ho-hum.

2-This Dying Soul: Terrible, terrible, terrible. A decent and somewhat catchy chorus, stifled by the overwhelming amount of superfluous playing, immature lyrics, and one part where the vocalist is almost rapping. It's also the continuation of another song (it starts at 'Part IV') but it's completely unclear as to which one, at least to me. Maybe a later song? Irrelevant, it's still an awful track.

3-Endless Sacrifice: Not horrible on the whole, but just not very good either. You can tell they weren't really trying. It has potential but is still just very average.

4-Honour Thy Father: More angst-ridden lyrics about how his parents. Could go for a bit of subtlety, or even creativity. Annoying samples in the song, too. The intro is pretty awesome though.

5-Vacant: Two minutes of boring trash: Really the best way to sum up this song. As a good friend of mine says, this song is 'vacant' of any good music. Yeah that was corny..

6-Stream of Consciousness: Okay, now this track is actually quite good. It rivals 'The Ytse Jam' for DT's best instrumental, possibly, although its biggest edge is that it's about twice as long. Eleven minutes and very enjoyable - not like any of the other songs at all. By the way, I don't want this to be misconstrued: the problem with this album isn't the 'vocals' (hence why the instrumental would be the best track) necessarily, but the sophmoric themes of the lyrics. Anyways, they should have trashed all of the other songs when they realised how high the bar was raised with this one.

7-In the Name of God: A decent follow-up to Stream of Consciousness, but not particularly great. The end is kind of boring and drawn-out, and the theme of the song on the whole could be a bit more mature. I just don't like the idea of bashing religion (or any real-world thing really) in music without at least some form of subtlety.

So to sum up, Stream of Consciousness is the song on here that is probably most universally-enjoyable, at least by fans of prog or even metal. The rest of the album really isn't going anywhere, and if it was, it was doing a bad job of it. Very dissappointing...

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