Helicity posted:

Just getting caught up and I'm kind of surprised no one said anything about Dream Theater's latest album, but I don't really blame anyone for not bringing it up either. I asked a buddy of mine what he thought and he said "One song reminded me of Kamelot. Another song sounded like Rush. That's about all I remember I guess."

Really disappointed because I had considered Portnoy's influence on the band to be a negative thing, and thought we'd get another SFaM with all the positive energy flowing. You can actually hear Myung a little now, there are no idiotic growls in the backing vocals, and no songs whining about alcoholism - but all that's left is a directionless mish-mash of uninspired instrument wankery. I keep hoping it will grow on me like some of their other recent albums, but that hasn't been the case so far.

Illumination Theory is pretty badass, I'll give them that.

edit: instead of just being negative, I have recently found Cynic - Traced in Air and the whole thing is really good, especially 'Nunc Stans' and 'The Space For This':

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUOxNaq35TU