The leaked songs are pretty good. Seems a bit more riff-based which is awesome. Petrucci's solos on these two songs alone are better than anything he has done the past two albums. However, Rudess, as always, only serves as a distraction.
Any other good Dream Theater albums?
- Thread starter Lateralus14
- Start date
grey knight
Etheraven
jimgreco
Member
A Nightmare To Remember is excellent, I love the black metal influence on it. When I 1st heard it I 
wankerness
Member
I just downloaded these two new songs ("A Nightmare to Remember" and "A Rite of Passage"), and here were my live reactions:
The former is 15 minutes long so hopefully this is epic. So far it has a really dirty metal sound to much of it with some black metalish keyboard sounds (note: the song itself doesn't sound remotely like black metal), it's alright thus far. Lots of standard Mike Portnoy wanking. There are some hilarious car crash sound effects over one of the guitar riffs towards the beginning which will probably be made fun of by everyone who listens to the album. Also, there's a clean interlude with police sirens. I think bands need to realize that narrative sound effects need to be kept out of songs.
Oh god, now the clean interlude sounds like "Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd. Half done now. Despite sounding like Blurry, it's not too bad, just extremely contrived.
UH OH GUITAR SOLO +SARCASTIC SOUNDING GUITAR RIFF! Sounds like a mid period metallica bluesy solo with extra wanking. Oh god, here comes Rudess with his fucking siren sounding keyboard saw patch. >:< This solo section is very tried and true dream theater, lots of switching back and forth between guitar and keyboard while the same riffs repeat for a few minutes just changing keys. Snore.
Now it abruptly switched back to the dimmu borgir sounding thing that happened in the intro, except with extreme guitar wanking. Pretty amusing. 10:30 vocals came in that sound like Daniel Gildenlow's "Tough Guy" voice, I really don't know who this is. I can only figure it's Portnoy trying to sound super grunty and masculine, but i guess it COULD be labrie. Wow!
Another unison guitar/keyboard thing in some annoying style, this one sounding much like a reject from The Dance of Eternity. Ooo, back to the early chugger metal riffs. AND HERE IS THE POLICE SIREN AGAIN! at 13:30 it goes back to the cool sounding riff from close to the beginning. HAHA now portnoy is doing a fucking blastbeat over it! I love it when bands like Dream Theater do that. Long drawn out dream theater ending, as expected.
Overall I'm not really that impressed but I certainly don't hate it. It has a few new ideas but by and large is just formulaic dream theater "heavy" song.
Time for A Rite of Passage. Ooo, vaguely middle eastern riff! Sounds like an Elegy-period Amorphis ripoff. Now it's calming down into a standard chuggy metal riff. Haha, menacing group background grunts at the beginning of vocal phrases. That's so Rust in Peace. Ooo prechorus is back to standard middle eastern-flavored metal ripoff. And now the chorus is incredibly stupid and sounds like a very miscalculated grab for radio play (sounds like a combination of the "Help, he's my brother!" part in Strange Deja Vu and "We're Not Gonna Take it" by Twisted Sister), as well as not having anything to do with the rest of the song. Fail! Back to Amorphis riff. Now standard "do the same verse but this time with a very noodly guitar riff, cause that will BUILD TENSION!!!!" dream theater second verse. Prechorus again, chorus again, snoreeeeeee, this must be the single.
Uh oh, a solitary palm muted guitar riff! This must be the beginning of an X-TREME METAL SECTION!!! Yep, here's the guitar solo!!!! PETRUCCI IS RAPING FACE WITH ALL THOSE NOTES FUCK THIS IS X-TREME!!!!!!! X TREME!!!!!! Whoa dude, now the riff shifted keys and the KEYBOARDIST is soloing! I didn't see that one coming!!!! X-TREME!!!!!!
Ok, now they actually did surprise me, since it sounds like now they're either having a UFO, a pennywhistle, or the world's worst DJ do a solo, I can't tell wtf this is. It sounds horrible, whatever it is. Random squeaky pitchshifting shit.
Now back to the chorus! This just doesn't get old! Oh, and thank god they played that amorphis ripoff riff again! I had almost forgotten about it from the other several long sections of it in the song.
OK, that song sucked.
And for the record, Awake is what I'd recommend for the topic on hand. I loved that album for years and it's about the only one of theirs I usually enjoy when I listen to it today. Falling Into Infinity and Images & Words are both pretty good too, and SDOIT/ToT aren't terrible. "A Change of Seasons" the song you should get, as it's probably their best work - too bad the rest of the "album" is a bunch of annoying live covers.
The former is 15 minutes long so hopefully this is epic. So far it has a really dirty metal sound to much of it with some black metalish keyboard sounds (note: the song itself doesn't sound remotely like black metal), it's alright thus far. Lots of standard Mike Portnoy wanking. There are some hilarious car crash sound effects over one of the guitar riffs towards the beginning which will probably be made fun of by everyone who listens to the album. Also, there's a clean interlude with police sirens. I think bands need to realize that narrative sound effects need to be kept out of songs.
Oh god, now the clean interlude sounds like "Blurry" by Puddle of Mudd. Half done now. Despite sounding like Blurry, it's not too bad, just extremely contrived.
UH OH GUITAR SOLO +SARCASTIC SOUNDING GUITAR RIFF! Sounds like a mid period metallica bluesy solo with extra wanking. Oh god, here comes Rudess with his fucking siren sounding keyboard saw patch. >:< This solo section is very tried and true dream theater, lots of switching back and forth between guitar and keyboard while the same riffs repeat for a few minutes just changing keys. Snore.
Now it abruptly switched back to the dimmu borgir sounding thing that happened in the intro, except with extreme guitar wanking. Pretty amusing. 10:30 vocals came in that sound like Daniel Gildenlow's "Tough Guy" voice, I really don't know who this is. I can only figure it's Portnoy trying to sound super grunty and masculine, but i guess it COULD be labrie. Wow!
Another unison guitar/keyboard thing in some annoying style, this one sounding much like a reject from The Dance of Eternity. Ooo, back to the early chugger metal riffs. AND HERE IS THE POLICE SIREN AGAIN! at 13:30 it goes back to the cool sounding riff from close to the beginning. HAHA now portnoy is doing a fucking blastbeat over it! I love it when bands like Dream Theater do that. Long drawn out dream theater ending, as expected.
Overall I'm not really that impressed but I certainly don't hate it. It has a few new ideas but by and large is just formulaic dream theater "heavy" song.
Time for A Rite of Passage. Ooo, vaguely middle eastern riff! Sounds like an Elegy-period Amorphis ripoff. Now it's calming down into a standard chuggy metal riff. Haha, menacing group background grunts at the beginning of vocal phrases. That's so Rust in Peace. Ooo prechorus is back to standard middle eastern-flavored metal ripoff. And now the chorus is incredibly stupid and sounds like a very miscalculated grab for radio play (sounds like a combination of the "Help, he's my brother!" part in Strange Deja Vu and "We're Not Gonna Take it" by Twisted Sister), as well as not having anything to do with the rest of the song. Fail! Back to Amorphis riff. Now standard "do the same verse but this time with a very noodly guitar riff, cause that will BUILD TENSION!!!!" dream theater second verse. Prechorus again, chorus again, snoreeeeeee, this must be the single.
Uh oh, a solitary palm muted guitar riff! This must be the beginning of an X-TREME METAL SECTION!!! Yep, here's the guitar solo!!!! PETRUCCI IS RAPING FACE WITH ALL THOSE NOTES FUCK THIS IS X-TREME!!!!!!! X TREME!!!!!! Whoa dude, now the riff shifted keys and the KEYBOARDIST is soloing! I didn't see that one coming!!!! X-TREME!!!!!!
Ok, now they actually did surprise me, since it sounds like now they're either having a UFO, a pennywhistle, or the world's worst DJ do a solo, I can't tell wtf this is. It sounds horrible, whatever it is. Random squeaky pitchshifting shit.
Now back to the chorus! This just doesn't get old! Oh, and thank god they played that amorphis ripoff riff again! I had almost forgotten about it from the other several long sections of it in the song.
OK, that song sucked.
And for the record, Awake is what I'd recommend for the topic on hand. I loved that album for years and it's about the only one of theirs I usually enjoy when I listen to it today. Falling Into Infinity and Images & Words are both pretty good too, and SDOIT/ToT aren't terrible. "A Change of Seasons" the song you should get, as it's probably their best work - too bad the rest of the "album" is a bunch of annoying live covers.
Tubbs
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Alex78
Fretbuzz Virtuoso
jimgreco
Member
I actually like it, except for that Rudess part towards the end...Wtf was he thinking? But after a few listens the chorus is very catchy, and overall I like it. Much better than their last single, Constant Motion.
that palm muted riff in Rite of Passage is one of the best DT riffs I've heard since Six Degrees.
