Label: Electra Records
Release date: 11.11.2003
Production: John Petrucci & Mike Portnoy
Album length: 68.19 min
Genre: Progressive Metal
Jaw-dropping! Shock. That much aggression from Dream Theater isn’t exactly an everyday thing. So what the hell does this train of the blackest thoughts have to offer? First, let me get something off my chest that really bugs me about Dream Theater. They play these hardcore intellectuals, wrapping their poetry in lofty sermonizing. But as long as Portnoy keeps xenophobically cheering on the aggressive militancy of the US across planet Earth in his interviews, Dream Theater’s quest for some kind of higher spiritual spheres is going to look downright laughable.
Petrucci’s guitar has never sounded this aggressively filthy, this raspy. The band was already leaning toward brutality on the previous album, “Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence” (2002). Dream Theater have never served up this much half-step riffing (see As I Am, Honor Thy Father, In The Name Of God). The “modernized” sound and the band’s stylistic makeover, musically speaking, sit less well with singer James LaBrie and his tone of voice. This time, whenever he decides to follow the half-step guitar riffing, his singing sounds like a dog barking, far from the vocal venom of James Hetfield – next to that comparison, LaBrie is more of a dog coughing. LaBrie also sings through all sorts of effects that deliberately warp his natural vocal, because the guys are going all in on the aggression card. The band is getting heavier from record to record, but it has sacrificed a good chunk of its melodicity along the way. As a result, even the solo breakouts, i.e. the criss-crossing supersonic machine-gunning of all the instruments, which of course aren’t missing from this record either, don’t fully come alive and don’t reach the expressiveness we’re used to. Which means the following. Besides musicality, Dream Theater have sacrificed some of their complexity too, and in their new look they’ve become much more linear, while the multilayered quality that used to come with the band is losing its meaning.
Stream Of Consciousness, with an “espresso” shot of baroque solo shrapnel at the end, is the most melodic moment on the record and, of the new songs, it ties back most to the nineties, toward the “Awake” (1994) album. In The Name Of God also gets some dynamics from Rudess’s oriental keyboard bits and Mike’s varied drum work, which sounds more like percussion as a backdrop here, creating an enviable and thrilling contrast in the song. In fact, the Portnoy/Myung rhythm section got more room to stretch out in this kind of musical setting, and it’s really interesting to hear how the two of them fill up the space in the tracks.
Dream Theater rushed into the studio and, without much overthinking, quickly wrote and recorded a batch of new compositions: “Let’s bang out a quick jam, the record will sound different anyway, we’ve got the name, we’re selling well! Come on, let’s slip in a cuckoo’s egg.” So Train Of Thought is an album that came together very fast.
The demonstration of half-step chopping is surprising and almost steals the top spot from the supersonic soloing. Anyone looking for the theatrical musical appeal and accessibility of the legacy created between 1989 and 1999 might come up short on this one! What Dream Theater do with the new album, the new generation of mainstreamers pull off much better and more convincingly. If you asked an Arch Enemy fan which Dream Theater album they’d pick if they had to choose, they’d probably go for “Train Of Thought” without a second thought.
by: Aleš Podbrežnik
rating: 8.0 / 10
Track list:
1. As I Am (7:47)
2. This Dying Soul (11:27)
3. Endless Sacrifice (11:24)
4. Honor Thy Father (10:24)
5. Vacant (2:57)
6. Stream Of Consciousness (11:16)
7. In The Name Of God (14:14)
Lineup:
James LaBrie – vocals
John Petrucci – guitar
Jordan Rudess – keyboards
John Myung – bass guitar
Mike Portnoy – drums, percussion
