New Dream Theater Day!

After Systematic Chaos was released 2 years ago, I doubted if I would ever be excited about the release of a new Dream Theater album. But then they released A Rite Of Passage as a single from their new release and I started getting excited and anticipating.

Well…today is the day. Black Clouds & Silver Linings has been released. I'm going to be leaving detailed impressions for a later post in a couple days once I have time to digest it, but my overall feelings of this release are pretty darn positive.

Lyrically, it's a fairly weak effort, continuing the trend started on Systematic Chaos. Almost everything with John Petrucci lyrics is fairly blah. Especially The Count Of Tuscany.

But musically, this album blows Systematic Chaos out of the water. One of the trends I was weary of was their tendancy to wedge crazy instrumental sections into the middle of songs without any transition or reason for being there. But this time out, they've pulled back from that a bit. There's a couple of rough spots, but overall, the songs have an actual structure to them and a natural flow.

Jordan Ruddess also impressed me with his restraint on the keyboards. He plays for the song more often than not and really contributes positively to the album, even on his solos.

But the real star is John Petrucci. This album contains some of his best work (and some of his worst…see Wither…but that's only one song). His solos are melodic when they need to be, technical when it's called for and overall awesome. Especially the solo in The Best Of Times. That's one of the most emotional guitar solos I've ever heard. And one of my favorites of all time.

Speaking of The Best Of Times, it's probably my favorite track on the album. An extremely emotional tribute to drummer Mike Portnoy's dad who passed away last year. The lyrics here are the very best the album has to offer, in my opinion.

Overall a solid effort that's a step in the right direction coming off of their weakest album (in my opinion). Great music tempered by very blah lyrics in spots.

Anyway, I'll leave it there for now with general impressions and I'll post up a more detailed review in a few days once everything sinks in. It's going to be a very good year for music.

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