buchkoba00
Member
Yngvai X said:Aside from the title track, this album is filled with some of the most thrown together music I've ever heard DT "compose"
So the noodling jams of TOT were more put together than the actual structured songs of Oct?
Dream Theater - Octavarium
- Thread starter Yngtchie Blacksteen
- Start date
So the noodling jams of TOT were more put together than the actual structured songs of Oct?
Metropolis Part 2
DT and POS Fanboy!
dargormudshark said:
ROFL and you are a Adagio sheep right?
Sorry about that, Adagio sheep, but I couldn't stop but laugh at that because that was probably the funniest thing I've seen. I don't even like one song off this album !!! Does that come as a shock to you?
By the way, I don't even rate Octavarium very high, maybe only a 8.5, but I like it CURRENTLY better than Sym X's V, that will change once I stop listening to the album 5 times a day.
MC Pee pants
Wookie Member
Silent Song said:
I see what you're saying, but there are a number of songs that if they were changed from being in F wouldn't sound quite the same. It might make them sound a little better or a little worse, but generally the key of a song does change it's character. For instance my mom really likes things in B natural.
But you're right, that shouldn't be why an album is deemed great.
its enough to keep me a fan. i think its an improvement over ToT. the symphony was very lacking and could have been easily just sampled on JR's keyboard, but i guess to keep up with the prog standards nowadays u hafta put symphonies in ur songs. im good cuz i already wrote a symphony this past year. but i like summa the keyboard (synth) stuff on oct. and at like 17:40ish in the title track JR plays Jingle Bells, my bassist friend pointed out to me earlier today. its definately not my fav cd, but i wouldnt consider it a total disaster. the AA thing has 12 parts i guess and they're only on 7 i think, so we're gonna have a few more DT cds to go. it'd be cool to hear all the songs back to back live some time. Glass prison and the root of all evil have some cool instrumental parts, dying soul is like ... meh ... but its cool about the concept spreading it out over a few cds i guess. now i just cant wait to see how much SX, Andromeda, Adagio's new cds are gonna own octavarium. OH AND WHO THE FUCK IS THAT ASIAN CHICK ON THE BACK OF THE BOOK THING??
dargormudshark
Senior Member
Metropolis Part 2 said:ROFL and you are a Adagio sheep right?
Sorry about that, Adagio sheep, but I couldn't stop but laugh at that because that was probably the funniest thing I've seen. I don't even like one song off this album !!! Does that come as a shock to you?
By the way, I don't even rate Octavarium very high, maybe only a 8.5, but I like it CURRENTLY better than Sym X's V, that will change once I stop listening to the album 5 times a day.
I am a sheep for no band, but if you don't like one song from an album how can you rate it 8.5
Rose Immortal
Spirit of Hope
- Jun 19, 2004
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You know, the extent of this flaming is getting ridiculous, with how personal it's become.
All I care about is that it's earned itself a very nice, permanent place in my CD collection where it will be loved among many other albums I really enjoy--other people's opinions be damned. I'm through with this thread...it's obvious it's degenerated to the point of ridiculousness.
All I care about is that it's earned itself a very nice, permanent place in my CD collection where it will be loved among many other albums I really enjoy--other people's opinions be damned. I'm through with this thread...it's obvious it's degenerated to the point of ridiculousness.
Taliwakker
.....
I've listened to it once or twice and its neither here nor there....the only song that grabbed my attention was 'Never Enough' and that was because it was different...not neccesarily good....i hoped this was banged out quickly to satisfy their record company obligations. I don't know how many more listens its gonna get because i bought it with 8 other cds...and the real standout is BIOMECHANICAL-Empires of the World. Awesome band, amazing singer....sort of like the best Judas Priest mixed with Pantera and Nevermore....but better than all 3. Watch out for em.
dargormudshark
Senior Member
Metropolis Part 2
DT and POS Fanboy!
Jax
Forum Goddess
snakeey11
Tool of the Devil
Rose Immortal said:
Well said, and I couldn't agree with you more. All that matters to me is that I really enjoy the CD, and it's definitely getting heavy play right now.
Metropolis Part 2
DT and POS Fanboy!
snakeey11 said:
Definitely, I've been listening to that album so much I remember the chorus in "The Answer Lies Within". I think I like that poppy ballad more than Another Day
By the way, I really like your signature
MorphineChild205
Lt. Horatio Caine
Right now I'm hooked on The Root Of All Evil, Never Enough, and These Walls.
A little fact about the song Octavarium that I found on the DT board...
In Part IV (Intervals), Portnoy says each scale degree before LaBrie delivers each of his Dave Mustaine-ish lines.
[Root]
Our deadly sins feel his mortal wrath
Remove all obstacles from our path
[Second]
Asking questions
Search for clues
The answer's been right in front of you
[Third]
We try to break through
Long to connect
Fall on deaf ears with failed muted breath
[Fourth]
Loyalty, trust, faith and desire
Carries love through each darkest fire
[Fifth]
Tortured insanity
A smothering hell
Try to escape but to no avail
[Sixth]
The calls of admirers
Who claim they adore
Drain all your lifeblood while begging for more
[Seventh]
Innocent victims for merciless crimes
Fall prey to some madman's impulsive designs
[Octave]
Step after step
We try controlling our fate
When we finally start living it's become to late
Fourth and Sixth are easiest to hear, but they're all in there.
Each degree also represents the appropriate song on the album. LaBrie's lines briefly explain the theme of each song.
A little fact about the song Octavarium that I found on the DT board...
In Part IV (Intervals), Portnoy says each scale degree before LaBrie delivers each of his Dave Mustaine-ish lines.
[Root]
Our deadly sins feel his mortal wrath
Remove all obstacles from our path
[Second]
Asking questions
Search for clues
The answer's been right in front of you
[Third]
We try to break through
Long to connect
Fall on deaf ears with failed muted breath
[Fourth]
Loyalty, trust, faith and desire
Carries love through each darkest fire
[Fifth]
Tortured insanity
A smothering hell
Try to escape but to no avail
[Sixth]
The calls of admirers
Who claim they adore
Drain all your lifeblood while begging for more
[Seventh]
Innocent victims for merciless crimes
Fall prey to some madman's impulsive designs
[Octave]
Step after step
We try controlling our fate
When we finally start living it's become to late
Fourth and Sixth are easiest to hear, but they're all in there.
Each degree also represents the appropriate song on the album. LaBrie's lines briefly explain the theme of each song.
dargormudshark
Senior Member
Barking Pumpkin
Member
- Aug 31, 2004
- 2,942
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Metropolis Part 2 said:
This is the attitude I'm annoyed with. Just because they do a better job of making radio rock than all of the other radio rock bands out there, does that mean it's acceptable? It's a decent album, with a few awesome moments, but half of the songs sound like they took about an hour to write and record. And with a band as supposedly talented as Dream Theater, I think they have a bigger obligation to the fans than what it sounds like they're doing.
Oh, by the way, is the production just as awful and muddy on the album as the leak was? We had the mail held while we were gone, so I won't get the actual CD until tomorrow.
Barking Pumpkin
Member
- Aug 31, 2004
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Okay, here's my review I wrote for metal-archives:
Unacceptable Coming From Dream Theater - 40%
Written by Theatre on June 2nd, 2005
Well.....I can't tell you how much I wanted this album to be great, for this to bring Dream Theater back to the progressive spotlight, for them to do something new.
But, after listening to it many times, I think Dream Theater is a dying band. They're devoid of new ideas, and most of the members seem to be too caught up in how great they think they are to realize it.
There are several issues that plague this album. One of these issues is the production. John Petrucci's guitar sound on the albums has been getting worse ever since he got the Music Man as far as I'm concerned. I wasn't a fan of the guitar sound on SDOIT, although I love the album, and the guitar wasn't awful. However, on this, it sounds pretty bad. The production is also very muddy, not acceptable from a Dream Theater album.
The next thing, stale instrumentation. John Petrucci has apparently acquired a fetish for down-tuning his guitar and playing generic power chord riffs. That's what a lot of the playing on the album sounds like, which is unfortunate, since we know he is capable of so much. Another stale bit is Jordan Rudess' playing. "The Answer Lies Within" is what I would call one of the "good" songs on the album, but the keyboard is so stale. He's not even trying to play outside the box, just playing quarter-note chords. How boring coming from Jordan Rudess.
The other issue with instrumentation is soloing on the album. There are only two worthwhile solo sections on the album, the one in "Octavarium," and to a lesser degree, the one in "Sacrificed Sons." I laugh every time I hear the solos in "Panic Attack." John Petrucci isn't even trying; he's just doing random guitar exercises. Jordan's solos also sound uninspired on this. It sounds like they just said "oh yeah....I guess we should stick a solo in there."
The whole "dark" sound is another issue. Dream Theater just can't do it without it sounding like epic radio rock. This power chord writing, and then the verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure is very boring. So a lot of the songs they end up coming out with a generic song that could have gone through it's musical variety in under four minutes, but they drag it out to eight. The other problem with this is that the vocals suffer. James LaBrie can't do the dark vocals, but they paint him into that corner, using the lower range over a heavy backing, and he sounds mediocre at best. His best performances are in the non-downtuned songs here.
The ripping off is something I shouldn't have to hear from Dream Theater. While there are Muse inspired moments on the album, "Never Enough" is a complete rip-off of Muse. I'm not a Muse fan, but I was alerted to this by someone else. The U2 chorus on "I Walk Beside You" is also a rip-off, but the rest of the song doesn't sound like that, so it's not as big an issue. The point here is not whether it sounds good or not, but that it takes no though at all to rip-off another band.
There are some good moments here. "Sacrificed Sons" is straight from Scenes From A Memory, which if not totally creative, is better than the more generic things on the album. The best track here is the epic title track, "Octavarium." Lots of interesting melodies (compared to the generic melodies they use in the "heavy" songs), a nice solo melody, great vocals from James, and the nice addition of a string ensemble for the emotional ending. An excellent song. This is what they should be doing more of here.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with "heavy" songs. Dream Theater have some really great, tasteful heavy songs that aren't just generic radio-rock fests......all the seven-string songs on Awake, "The Dance Of Eternity," etc. But this is just generic material. Especially "These Walls." It's just a seven and a half minute radio rock song.
So here is my track list from best to worst, and notice the mediocrity line.....although for Dream Theater, it should probably be the line where it's not worth listening to.
1. Octavarium
2. Sacrificed Sons
3. I Walk Beside You
4. The Answer Lies Within
---mediocrity line---
5. Never Enough*
6. Panic Attack
7. The Root Of All Evil
8. These Walls
*Never Enough is good as a song, but the fact that it is a complete rip-off of another band means that it doesn't have much musical value.
To conclude.....this is a good album. It has a few great songs, and some good songs. However, this is not a good Dream Theater album at all. It's not "progressive," it doesn't introduce anything new, and with the exception of one song, they can't even go back to their old sound, so it's not even a nostalgia trip. There are quite a few points where you can hear the "progressiveness" trying to poke its head out, but those moments don't outweigh how thoroughly generic a good portion of this album is. I'm buying this album.....but unless they can pull themselves out of the gutter this might be the last Dream Theater album I buy. Sadly, I don't see them bringing it back up because they don't seem to be able to take criticism or see any negative things about what they're making. As many know, 'Elements Of Persuasion' was originally distributed masquerading as Octavarium. Well, this album isn't too far removed from that heaping pile of garbage, but it's worse in principle just because this is Dream Theater making this. Remember what they can do? Well....this isn't it, they're holding back. If it weren't for the title track, this probably would have gotten a thirty. Even though there are some really nice moments here, especially in the "good songs," from a musical perspective, it's generic and cliché. This is what it sounds like when a good progressive band decides to do radio rock.
Buy it for Octavarium, the great song, and for the couple of other "good" songs.
Also, another note on the "strings." They're actually quite cliche and a bit silly when you think about them. It really could have been much more. I agree with whoever said that they could have used just the keyboard. They could have made the orchestration much better and more complex to better evoke emotion. One of my big complaints with certain bands is that they use orchestra effects but use a synthesizer for them, and make it painfully obvious that it's fake. It's great, but it would sound much better if it was real. Well, here they didn't do enough with the orchestration to make it worth having the real instruments there.
Unacceptable Coming From Dream Theater - 40%
Written by Theatre on June 2nd, 2005
Well.....I can't tell you how much I wanted this album to be great, for this to bring Dream Theater back to the progressive spotlight, for them to do something new.
But, after listening to it many times, I think Dream Theater is a dying band. They're devoid of new ideas, and most of the members seem to be too caught up in how great they think they are to realize it.
There are several issues that plague this album. One of these issues is the production. John Petrucci's guitar sound on the albums has been getting worse ever since he got the Music Man as far as I'm concerned. I wasn't a fan of the guitar sound on SDOIT, although I love the album, and the guitar wasn't awful. However, on this, it sounds pretty bad. The production is also very muddy, not acceptable from a Dream Theater album.
The next thing, stale instrumentation. John Petrucci has apparently acquired a fetish for down-tuning his guitar and playing generic power chord riffs. That's what a lot of the playing on the album sounds like, which is unfortunate, since we know he is capable of so much. Another stale bit is Jordan Rudess' playing. "The Answer Lies Within" is what I would call one of the "good" songs on the album, but the keyboard is so stale. He's not even trying to play outside the box, just playing quarter-note chords. How boring coming from Jordan Rudess.
The other issue with instrumentation is soloing on the album. There are only two worthwhile solo sections on the album, the one in "Octavarium," and to a lesser degree, the one in "Sacrificed Sons." I laugh every time I hear the solos in "Panic Attack." John Petrucci isn't even trying; he's just doing random guitar exercises. Jordan's solos also sound uninspired on this. It sounds like they just said "oh yeah....I guess we should stick a solo in there."
The whole "dark" sound is another issue. Dream Theater just can't do it without it sounding like epic radio rock. This power chord writing, and then the verse-chorus-verse-chorus structure is very boring. So a lot of the songs they end up coming out with a generic song that could have gone through it's musical variety in under four minutes, but they drag it out to eight. The other problem with this is that the vocals suffer. James LaBrie can't do the dark vocals, but they paint him into that corner, using the lower range over a heavy backing, and he sounds mediocre at best. His best performances are in the non-downtuned songs here.
The ripping off is something I shouldn't have to hear from Dream Theater. While there are Muse inspired moments on the album, "Never Enough" is a complete rip-off of Muse. I'm not a Muse fan, but I was alerted to this by someone else. The U2 chorus on "I Walk Beside You" is also a rip-off, but the rest of the song doesn't sound like that, so it's not as big an issue. The point here is not whether it sounds good or not, but that it takes no though at all to rip-off another band.
There are some good moments here. "Sacrificed Sons" is straight from Scenes From A Memory, which if not totally creative, is better than the more generic things on the album. The best track here is the epic title track, "Octavarium." Lots of interesting melodies (compared to the generic melodies they use in the "heavy" songs), a nice solo melody, great vocals from James, and the nice addition of a string ensemble for the emotional ending. An excellent song. This is what they should be doing more of here.
I'm not saying there is anything wrong with "heavy" songs. Dream Theater have some really great, tasteful heavy songs that aren't just generic radio-rock fests......all the seven-string songs on Awake, "The Dance Of Eternity," etc. But this is just generic material. Especially "These Walls." It's just a seven and a half minute radio rock song.
So here is my track list from best to worst, and notice the mediocrity line.....although for Dream Theater, it should probably be the line where it's not worth listening to.
1. Octavarium
2. Sacrificed Sons
3. I Walk Beside You
4. The Answer Lies Within
---mediocrity line---
5. Never Enough*
6. Panic Attack
7. The Root Of All Evil
8. These Walls
*Never Enough is good as a song, but the fact that it is a complete rip-off of another band means that it doesn't have much musical value.
To conclude.....this is a good album. It has a few great songs, and some good songs. However, this is not a good Dream Theater album at all. It's not "progressive," it doesn't introduce anything new, and with the exception of one song, they can't even go back to their old sound, so it's not even a nostalgia trip. There are quite a few points where you can hear the "progressiveness" trying to poke its head out, but those moments don't outweigh how thoroughly generic a good portion of this album is. I'm buying this album.....but unless they can pull themselves out of the gutter this might be the last Dream Theater album I buy. Sadly, I don't see them bringing it back up because they don't seem to be able to take criticism or see any negative things about what they're making. As many know, 'Elements Of Persuasion' was originally distributed masquerading as Octavarium. Well, this album isn't too far removed from that heaping pile of garbage, but it's worse in principle just because this is Dream Theater making this. Remember what they can do? Well....this isn't it, they're holding back. If it weren't for the title track, this probably would have gotten a thirty. Even though there are some really nice moments here, especially in the "good songs," from a musical perspective, it's generic and cliché. This is what it sounds like when a good progressive band decides to do radio rock.
Buy it for Octavarium, the great song, and for the couple of other "good" songs.
Also, another note on the "strings." They're actually quite cliche and a bit silly when you think about them. It really could have been much more. I agree with whoever said that they could have used just the keyboard. They could have made the orchestration much better and more complex to better evoke emotion. One of my big complaints with certain bands is that they use orchestra effects but use a synthesizer for them, and make it painfully obvious that it's fake. It's great, but it would sound much better if it was real. Well, here they didn't do enough with the orchestration to make it worth having the real instruments there.
-Rivfader-
Klingons on Uranus
The Root of all Evil is a kick ass song.
Octavarium is a damned good prog epic.
I love this album. I don't care what anybody else said it is very good.
Octavarium is a damned good prog epic.
I love this album. I don't care what anybody else said it is very good.
ErikSchierboom
Prog newbie
- Mar 21, 2004
- 97
- 0
- 6
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Dark Lucidity
Wrath
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