Stoney

"As rumored at the time in the tight-knit circles of the fan club, he was afraid to publish such a masterpiece for fear of overwhelming the demoralized competition and 'killing' the market." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA HA HA AH AH AH AH AH AH AH AHAHHAHAHA AH AH AH AH HAHAHAHAHAH AH AHA HA HAHA....... maybe Petrucci was also afraid of picking too fast on the solo of Fatal Tragedy because everyone within a 10 km radius would have died...

It's serious that on this site, which will have a few billion members, only Easycure and a couple of others have a minimum of brains and critical thinking to discuss music. It's really true that the global market has made us slaves.

Hahaha a "pain-in-the-ass parent." But you really overestimate yourselves... as for me, I don't give a damn about you :D Listen to whatever the hell you want, at most I can feel pity for you, as well as endless sorrow.

Sklemby, how nice your post is. You wanted to debunk me, and instead, you proved me right across the board. Easycure responded for me. "There have been no musical innovations in the last 30 years," oh my god, what blasphemy... there, you confirmed what I said, you self-demonstrated it. The fact is that to shout masterpiece, all you need is the perfect and finely embroidered packaging, and I don't. This album is a continuous "cultured" citation of harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic solutions from the great bands of the past, like Rush, Kansas, Genesis, Pink Floyd, and moreover simplified (in my opinion, this is an easy listen, except for those who have only ever heard Metallica), the only thing that changes is the technical exaggeration and the cleanliness of the sound pushed to extremes. Beware, I’m not saying, like many, that Dream Theater "copy," I’m saying they use THE SAME STYLES as other bands, which might even be worse, and not in an intelligent or syncretic way, as everyone truly does (inevitably, I would say, except for the genius that comes once every 1000 years), but with a annoyingly method of copy/paste. You see, there is a deep difference between building upon the influence of the past and simply citing it while perfecting only its form. It's like, I’ll give a silly example, writing a book using the same descriptive technique as Tolkien alongside the introspective style of Joyce, with a vaguely Pirandellian touch. That’s not how a masterpiece is created, I hope I’ve made myself clear... However, if you think about it, metal has always been this way: a continuous citation of a style of music born in the '70s and perfected through new recording technologies, that’s it. The way any metal band composes today (except perhaps for a handful) is identical to how Black Sabbath did, it’s just that today we have a sound clarity that was unthinkable back then. Dream Theater, in 1991, simply changed the source of their citations, and nothing more. That no one has invented anything in 30 years can only be said if you have blinders on about metal, and I repeat that this album can only be considered a masterpiece by those who truly have not heard anything in their life and are easily amazed. You can say it’s well-made, pleasant to listen to, fun, lively, whatever you like, but putting it on a pedestal as many do and giving it the importance that many would like is truly too bold.

Sklemby, I have no desire to fill pages with reasons why I'm giving it a mediocre rating; I've done that in the past and I don't want to repeat myself. I'll be concise and try to explain it anyway. The fact is that people like you, who say this record has no weak points, seem to speak as if there exists somewhere a "Manual of the Perfect Musician," and that every musician's task is to strive to follow it to the letter. So, Petrucci is the greatest guitarist of the century, while, for example, Jerry Cantrell is just a loudmouth who plays the guitar like a broom because he can't play fast solos. Well, music is not this, I’m sorry. This album is indeed "perfect" from a formal point of view; it has everything that should be there at the right moment, every note is exactly where one would expect it to be, there is not a smudge, it feels like listening to a class of high school students reciting the lesson by heart and the teacher gives them a 9, and this is NOT a merit at all. Within this record, you can hear hundreds of other bands that preceded them, not reworked or reinterpreted, but taken exactly as they are, with the same style and the same expressive intentions, replicated unchanged, indeed, "by the book," without trying to push even a little. After the major chord, there's the minor chord that has always existed in rock,; in the slow piece, the arpeggio is always the one we're used to hearing, and obviously the minor melody demands a heartfelt solo after two verses and a chorus, and the sax that underscores the melancholy of the song JUST LIKE IT'S ALWAYS BEEN DONE. In the most twisted piece of all, there is a cacophony of useless notes but "well done," exactly as the extreme prog school wants, and the odd time signature for its own sake that makes the average metalhead's eyes bulge... Moreover, the melodies that many exalt are predictable, trivial, so singable they would fit well on a Shakira album, but all of this is forgiven because they're "technically impeccable." In short, instrumentally, they are trivial (technical but trivial), and the emotions they evoke are chemical reactions, utterly predictable, achieved in a lab through formulas refined over decades of music. This album is neither a step forward nor a step back in the universe of Music, even if it's just rock. This album has been successful in metal circles, where young long-haired kids used to Master Of Puppets believed they discovered Paradise. The only reason many say what you’re saying is, in fact, the sense of wonder (childish, in my opinion) at the supposed technical omnipotence of the five who perform it (and what should the Dave Matthews Band be then? A group of reincarnated gods?). Got it now?

JoeBlack, come on. Criticizing prog a priori! As if they were someone special. I said that Dream Theater sucks, not Genesis, not King Crimson. Since when are Dream Theater, the newcomers, prog "a priori"? See? You don’t know shit.

And this is not to say that they are invalid groups, heaven forbid... but they don't matter AT ALL. Especially Tool, then.

What the hell do Tool have to do with Meshuggah and Death... whatever. As long as there's a guitar making noise, for you it all counts.

Bah. In my opinion, Meshuggah are one of the few bands (perhaps the only one) that, after 30 years of the same old metal, have managed to give "heavy" sound a structured and complex meaning. No one has been able to do this for decades, and everyone is too busy trying to hit all the right notes at the right time to be praised by narrow-minded fans. Meshuggah don’t pick up their instruments worrying about creating “a killer riff” like the rest of the world; they don’t engage in complex technicalities just to be told they’re good (the drums are programmed electronically, which is a very un-metal attitude); Meshuggah aren't complicated for the sake of being so, but because on top of this absurd complexity and the resulting alienation, they build a poetic framework that is anything but trivial. This is perhaps the only metal band today that still cares about having something to say, about "meaning" something, trying to restore form to its original purpose, which is to convey a message. Then, the fact that a horde of narrow-minded metalheads floods this site to discuss how technical they are and how heavy is another story, and it mainly demonstrates (if there was ever a need) how much metalheads concern themselves with diving deep into the music they listen to.

Comment 31: "I think that those who talk shit about an album like this do it out of bias. I can't find any other explanation. Regardless of taste, it's impossible to give it a 1." Wrong. Regardless of taste (so beyond your juvenile logic of I like/I don't like, and within a discourse of serious critique made with sound judgment), it is entirely possible, indeed almost inevitable, to give it a rating that approaches mediocrity. The popularity of this genre of music feeds off the ignorance of the audience and those who think like you.