I've been through two listens so far (Thanks Ken Golden!), the second one with my 17 year old son, and no distractions...............
.....................I kinda like it. It's grown on me quite a bit with just two listens. There are some "weird" moments where you look at the speakers and think "huh? What was that?", but then they reel you right back in with some sweet vocal harmony or a sing-along chorus, and you remember why you keep coming back. James goes into "opera" mode a few times, but I'll get past that.
The shred factor is pretty high, of course (Petrucci is faster than ever it seems), but it's not "Train of Thought heavy", so we prog heads should be relatively satisfied.
Jordan again selects some odd sounds at times, but that's what makes him Jordan, I guess. It's not overly distracting for me.
Portnoy is an animal, as usual, and my son Bret was sitting here with his jaw on the floor at many moments on the disc.
A fun listen. I can't wait to get it back from Bret (he took it to school today to show off to his friends)!!
Anyway, that's my short attention span review for the moment. I'll check back if anything changes......
Kez
P.S. JayDub, PUT DOWN THE CRACK PIPE! STEP BACK SLOWLY!
It's really not that bad, you know.....