I had a good feeling about this album since I first saw the awesome artwork, it somehow signalised a philosophical mystique and kept drawing my attention, a bit like the Awake cover and album still does after all these years.
Lets just say I'm not disappointed as Black Clouds And
Silver Linings rocks, rips, moves and inspires on many different levels, in short this is Progressive Metal as only one band has ever been able to deliver it.
Now you might be thinking that I'm some sort of DT nut case, and you're right. I honestly love this band and I'm delighted to announce that they have made their best album since the masterful Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence.
75 minutes split up between 6 tracks is quite a challenge, something that could even break an album apart, but that doesn't happen here.
A Nightmare To Remember sets a creepy mood right away with a keyboard melody that ends up being an ongoing theme throughout this first of very long epics.
The extremely diverse and really heavy drumming fits in perfectly while the shifting key / guitar solo taking up a large chunk of the songs midsection is enjoyable if not quite up to the standard we know this band is capable of. All in all a promising start.
With
A Rite Of Passage the band has picked out a wise choice for the first single, a track containing all the elements that makes
Dream Theater special and perhaps the coolest break by Petrucci ever, now that's one hell of a heavy guitar riff accompanied by some excellent lead shredding.
Lyrical it's about Freemasonry and the secret mystics connected to the phenommenen, pretty cool stuff and LaBrie nails the memorable chorus brilliantly. The flow of the song is elegant and this is surely gonna be a live favourite.
Wither is the albums full-blown "ballad" with underlying keyboard moods smooth as silk. The mid section vocal passage accompanied by a subtle piano is a clear album highlight and simply breathtaking, I dare you not to sing that line out loud after listening to the album a few times, let me now if you can resist the temptation.
The Shattered Fortress is the final part of Portnoy's "twelve-step suite" dealing with his fight against alcoholism. At first it may come along a bit untidy but the track soon begins to take form and it makes perfect sense as different motifs from the previous four songs are incorporated in a very elaborate way.
The galloping drums, crushing guitars and creative bass melt into a challenging rhythm section with different layers working simultaneously. Plenty of shifting solos and tempo changes makes it deliciously diverse.
When asked by Metal Inside about getting acceptance from the metal community
Mike Portnoy replied:
We've always been a metal band. But our problem is that we've always been too progressive for the real metalheads, and we're always too metal for the real prog purists. So as much as we've been able to float between the two worlds, I don't know if we've ever been fully embraced by either world.
Interesting thought and I guess there is something to it, on the other hand it's exactly this combination that has made the band so cherished by a lot of music fans. Black Clouds And
Silver Linings is at times really heavy and also very progressive but most of the time these two elements works in combination, it's hard to separate the one from the other and there's really no need to either.
The band has never been afraid of making things personal, an element that in my opinion has meant that their songs very often had much more to offer than just great music.
The Best Of Times deals with the death of
Mike Portnoy's father due to cancer and the result is down right moving. The last part of the song gets a bit long but with the final words
your spirit guides my life each day I guess we all in someway can relate to the feelings touched upon in this bombastic and emotional track.
In classic Petrucci style the final opus starts out with some subtle acoustics and a moody lead melody, but
The Count Of Tuscany soon shows a very ingenious side with all instruments meeting in a melting pot battle of eccentric skills. This bright passage leads into a more aggressive section, which again drifts into almost complete stillness as a dreamy key scenario unfolds, quite untypical DT and quite hypnotizing.
Lyrically
The Count Of Tuscany is a bit weird but the album as a whole brings along lots of cool passages to enjoy and I think that they have succeed in keeping focus intact in some very lengthy compositions.
As you could imagine the album sounds extremely professional and crisp, as goes for the "spoken" passages that appear in some songs I was prepared to be annoyed at some level, but somehow it actually works out decently.
Now I'm looking forward to the 3 CD edition and I have a hard time imagining DT fans not finding this album a challenge and a treat, after the first 15 spins I still feel it has more to offer.
Written by
Tommy Monday, June 15, 2009
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