Matt7

Rock is something else. If you call rock everything that's played with an electric guitar... okay...! The issue with the Pixies is to explain and to feel explained the sense of INNOVATION that easy means. Because, if we attribute to the DT pompous arrangements and various tricks under which, according to easy, there’s nothing, then we can make the same argument with any band that makes extensive use of noises and various distortions or weird stuff... this is not evolution but rather inability then! Let it be clear, I don't want to insult; my intention is to ask to understand the true SENSE of INNOVATION that you mean.

Lux, I'm not getting confused... the underlying problem is that people are looking for rock or revolution in the DT. What we don't understand is that they are not rock. Period. Then I speak up and express my opinion like anyone else..! Some things are indeed my area of expertise! If you think I'm ignorant, that's your problem...! I have a different conception of art than yours, okay..!

And then, what does palm muting have to do with it? Do we want to innovate palm muting too?...!!!!!! It would be like trying to renew the Italian alphabet.. Palm muting is what it is.. and that’s how it remains..:! It doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t carry a message, but is just a mere technical and rhythmic artifice...! Hetfield does it differently because the role of palm muting is different, more percussive and hammering, as thrash metal requires, but since DT is a prog band, this "hammering of palm muting" isn’t there!!!!!
It would be like trying to renew the C chord... the chord is what it is! And it’s the same for the extremely canonized and standardized prog structure of the DT: their prog is that, their intuition was to enrich it with strong metal ingredients.. but prog remains a genre that has its rules, and breaking them would mean no longer being prog but becoming another band. Their fusion of genres is already an innovative element, which doesn’t make sense because it’s not necessary for it to make sense. The meaning of this fusion lies in the fusion itself: because you, I don’t know, mix cream with custard?.. because I think it gives a different flavor to a cake... there it is.. the fusion of genres enriches the track, giving it a perhaps more cultured and complex imprint... and that’s the meaning of their music. To give a renewed vision of prog and metal, more cultured and enriched with new and ancient elements, the frequent influences that are NEVER VEILED BUT EXPLICITLY STATED. It’s not about youthful discomfort or the need to voice who knows what. It gives voice to the music, to the quality of the musicians, and to their musical tastes that merge in the compositions. There’s the meaning of their music. A melting pot of influences and styles that seek to demonstrate nothing else. Did the Beatles have a meaning or a message? And if so, which one?... it was new music, different, that in turn drew from who knows what other musical culture. And here are the DT. Their music, in the '90s, new and equipped with various styles and genres.

I’m truly baffled by what easycure is saying; I'm referring to just a few sentences regarding musical schizophrenia: "Because, to return to the previous discussion, if I hear Black Francis singing slightly out of tune and Joey Santiago arpeggiing over him with a dissonant, distorted phrasing, and the vocal chorus counterpointing where it's anything but obvious that it should counterpoint, and the drums are offbeat, well, I feel compelled to say, these are madmen. Great, tremendous madmen... where such imprinting, such personality in the 'schizophrenics' DT, I frankly can't understand." So I say: easy, you don't have a very grand conception of music as DISCIPLINE and STUDY: do you consider an out-of-tune arpeggio with someone singing randomly over it to be art?... because that's the crux of the matter!
And then I tell you one thing, with utmost respect, easy, but does everything have to make sense for you??? For you, it’s evidently not plausible that a band like DT plays and composes just for the pleasure of doing it, to write the music they like without any pretense of being innovative, etc... I don’t want to continue the discussion about Orion, both because I share it and because I would risk not being too objective!... I’ll tell you that nonetheless, DT does not have the pretension of being innovative. If you could manage to remove from your mind the idea that every band on earth must necessarily be innovative (which, by the way, I don't see innovation in the Pixies, apart from the various noisy and psychedelic distortions, etc., which if taken away, reveal such an elementary and mediocre conception of MUSIC that it becomes disarming), perhaps you could better appreciate the works of Petrucci and Co.

Good review... even though Alllllllright by Jim translates to "iiiiieeevvabbbene" by Ace Ventura!

aooooo!!!!!!
I'm back!
We need to understand that critics don't judge beauty so much because, indeed, that is a subjective parameter. Critics should focus on evaluating the quality of a product. And quality is OBJECTIVE and UNARGUABLE. And, again, Eva might write beautiful songs that people like, but they lack artistic quality. The whole philosophical aspect is a different discussion because it derives from someone else's thought and is therefore always different from our own. I don't consider philosophy to be a science like mathematics that is unchallengeable, but rather a science of thought. Art, when following qualitative parameters, is unassailable: you can't tell a Michelangelo that he doesn't know how to play; he is a qualitative artist but emotionally void, so his music is bad, yet of quality because there is still a study behind it. Unlike the Evas. Their music may be beautiful, but lacks a background that can elevate its qualitative level. And I'm not just talking about technical execution! But a series of factors (composition, adherence to the rules of harmony, etc.) that make a product a quality result. Imagine if Michelangelo hadn't respected the rules of the human body; what a terrible David would have come out!

Sorry.. but keep listening to the Ramones, okay?!

mediocre?...wow...go listen to something by the dt...and let’s see who the mediocre ones are...I can’t imagine there are still people who believe that Metallica can play...

your aversion to the prog-metal genre is an aversion to Dream Theater... I still recommend that if you want to know prog metal beyond the Theaterian shores, you listen to other bands: some you will find terribly similar to DT (Circus Maximus above all...), but some will truly have something good: I repeat:
1) SYMPHONY X (more power oriented) 2) PAIN OF SALVATION (maybe more classic prog) 3) ANGRA (quite power) 4) THRESHOLD (much more thrash) 5) ANDROMEDA 6) BEYOND TWILIGHT, or even the long-standing FATES WARNING!

Easy, but you also need to know the rest of prog-metal... not all the bands in this genre are the same: Symphony X have nothing to do with DT, just like Threshold and Pain of Salvation...!!!!!!