Within the opening two minutes of Dream Theater's newest release, I had formed an opinion of the album. After listening to the CD a couple of times, that opinion has been born out.
That opinion is that this entry in the DT lexicon has more in common with its Liquid Tension Experiment cousins than it does with previous Dream Theater releases. The difference being that the LTE albums were instrumentals. This is not a bad thing ... Liquid Tension's music was more exploratory than DT and had a lighter touch, and while Systematic Chaos has plenty of bone crushing moments, the lighter touch predominates.
The next thing long-time Dream Theater fans will notice is how much the bass is mixed to the front. For the first time, for an entire DT album, you can hear John Myung's bass lines. This is a very good thing. Past albums have been fantastic but have commonly suffered from a downmix of the bottom end. Myung's bass shines through on every song and will, at time, remind metal fans of mid-80s Iron Maiden.
Speaking of the songs, they're pretty darn good. The strongest entries are "Constant Motion," "The Dark Enternal Night," and "Repentance" which are tracks 3, 4, and 5. There are some hokey lyrics here and there, but the real strength of this album is in the instruments, not the marrying of instrument and voice. That's always been one of Dream Theater's weaknesses, and while singer James LaBrie has improved much over the years, the band is just playing far beyond his ability. The two seem dischordant to one another. But this is a small gripe in an otherwise excellent release.
As for the holy trinity -- John Petrucci, Mike Portnoy, and Jordan Rudess -- they deliver all the goods DT fans have come to expect from these master musicians. Guitar god Petrucci doesn't give as many machine-gun guitar solos this go around (though there are a few). His playing is far more nuanced. Rudess gives us plenty of the guitar-like keyboard solos and he revists a ragtimey theme that was a big hit in Scenes From a Memory. Portnoy doesn't disappoint either, smacking out the skins for all he's worth.
Bottom line: A solid entry that's well worth your time, but not one on par with Scenes From a Memory, Awake, or Images and Words.
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