The 12th album from this band from USA.
The band was a quintet with a lineup of drums, percussion, bass, guitars, synths, keyboards and vocals.
A string quartet from Hungary also added their instruments on this album.
I have no idea why the band chose to just name the their twelfth album after their own band name. This is normally what you do on your debut album.
I had my suspicions of what was awaiting me. In particular after the rather poor 2011 album A Dramatic Turn Of Events. That album was their first album with their new drummer Mike Mangini.
It has been argued that Mike Mangini is on a different level, a far higher level than Mike Portnoy, the drummer he replaced. That may be the case.
Dream Theater has a lot more darker, more complex songs than I expected. That is the big difference between this album and the previous albums.
The far too many minutes given to a classical piece by the string orchestra aside, this is a dark album.
There is no immediate hooks and songs on this album. No classic Dream Theater stuff and that has thrown me a bit.
The classical music stuff aside, the music is not bad at all. It is complex and ultra-tight. It is music for the pleasure of the music and not so much for pleasing the masses of Dream Theater fans.
It still falls a bit short. This is not on the standards I has always expected from this band.
The quality is somewhere between decent and good here. This is a Dream Theater album I will not give much more airtime, I am afraid.
2.5 points
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