DREAM THEATER SURVIVOR 2016: Results -> A Change Of Seasons wins!

Satisfied with the results?

  • Total voters
    10
SURVIVOR_RULES_017.jpg


Eliminated:
Constant Motion - 8 votes
Prophets Of War - 8 votes
Forsaken - 7 votes
Repentance - 6 votes
The Dance Of Eternity - 5 votes

Promoted:
Fatal Tragedy
Home
Finally Free
In The Presence Of Enemies
The Dark Eternal Night
The Ministry Of Lost Souls

Black Clouds & Silver Linings (+ Raw Dog) and A Dramatic Turn Of Events join the game!
 
This was kind of a culling... I think it was for the best to introduce these 2 albums at the same time, would've been just 12 songs if I only put BC&SL. Also, we're going at a much faster pace than I expected - got to the 11th album by Round 15 :) Take your time with the voting.
 
Yea, I'll get to BCSL by then, might just vote this round before listening to ADTOE.
 
Dying
Endless
Shattered - I like the ending "I am responsible," but everything else is just recycled riffs. Nope.
Best of Times - Not bad but I'm never in the mood for it.
Raw Dog - This gets a lot of hate but it's chaotic and I kinda like it. Nothing too special though.
Angels - Average, and shameless ripping off of their biggest "hit" in such an obvious manner.
Build Me Up - Nope. Just... nope.
This is the Life - This song is actually pretty good for a semi-ballad, but the others from Dramatic are better.
Far From Heaven - Kinda filler, and an obvious Wait For Sleep ripoff.

Now onto the good stuff...

Nightmare - I despise Portnoy's barking near the end, but otherwise I love this song. It even gets Opethian during the quiet bit!
Rite - Cool riffage in an otherwise average song. The Metallica-ish solo section is great though.
Wither - This is an emotive ballad, and DT has never been bad at writing them.
Tuscany - Probably my favorite long song they've done, next to Octavarium. The ending is spectacular. I don't care if the lyrics are lame.
Lost - I used to dislike this song because of the technical garbage, but I love it now for some reason. Great riffs too. Chorus annoys me though.
Bridges - Cool riffs and little wankery. Ending of the second chorus is great. Liked.
Outcry - The instrumental section is just as out of place as it was in Ministry, but the rest of the song is killer. Awesome chorus.
Breaking - Probably in my top 5 "complete" DT songs. Spectacular in every way.
Beneath - To me, the most emotive and strongest ballad the band has ever written.
 
I'm ahead of schedule. So I'm fine with whenever.

Voting for...
Stream
Nightmare
Rite
Wither
Raw Dog
BMUBMD
This is the Life
Far From Heaven
Beneath the Surface

Now to explain myself on some of these votes. (Transition!!)

After relistening to BC&SL, I really could not enjoy A Nightmare to Remember. The first few minutes are great, but when it gets to the beautiful agony section, I'm just lost. The music becomes a chore to listen to and I cannot stay interested for long. I also voted a Rite of Passage despite liking the verses and choruses. That middle section is way too wankery. This song makes TMOLS look like Wrathchild (not wankery) It really ruins the song. And for Wither.. This is my least favorite song by DT. Ever. I even like Raw Dog and You Not Me more. Wither is soooo boring. When I did my relisten I paused after A Rite of Passage and made a cup of coffee because I knew I would probably fall asleep. Wither gets an easy -1/10 for me. What were you thinking JP!?!?!?!?!

Raw Dog is stupid and pointless
But it's still better than Wither

ADTOE is the first DT album I heard in full and is one of my favorites. BMUBMD is a good song and I wouldn't have voted for it if it wasn't so hated. I know it's gonna be gone anyways, I'm just gonna make this easier on NP. This is the Life is nothing special. Nothing is really captivating about it so it gets a vote. Far From Heaven is very forgettable, and I really don't even remember listening to it. Beneath the Surface is very good, however that Keyboard section ruins it. Why Rudess? Why?!?!? Ruined a nearly perfect song! Apart from that, I love every other song here, and it's going to be especially hard voting for any other song on ADTOE.

Also.. I voted for SOC. It's one of the least good songs here when compared to the rest.
 
This Dying Soul
Stream of Consciousness
Wither
The Shattered Fortress
The Best of Times
The Count of Tuscany
Raw Dog
Build me Up, Break me Down
Lost Not Forgotten
Far From Heaven
 
Coming around to making my final thoughts on Systematic Chaos, but I've made my own tracklisting, song edits (splicing ITPOE and cutting the wind noise at the end of Ministry), and artwork to help me hopefully enjoy it a little better.

gF6XCti.jpg


Organized Chaos
1. Constant Motion
2. Forsaken
3. Repentance
4. The Dark Eternal Night
5. Prophets of War
6. The Ministry of Lost Souls
7. In the Presence of Enemies

If anyone wants to hear it, PM me!
 
Last edited:
Collin said:
Beneath the Surface is very good, however that Keyboard section ruins it. Why Rudess? Why?!?!? Ruined a nearly perfect song!
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I think his solo is out of place, too, but the song is so good that I actually don't care. And it's not the actual notes he's playing, which are quite tasteful -- but rather the space monkey orgy tone. This would've been better as a guitar solo, no question about it.
 
Detective Beauregard said:
I think his solo is out of place, too, but the song is so good that I actually don't care. And it's not the actual notes he's playing, which are quite tasteful -- but rather the space monkey orgy tone. This would've been better as a guitar solo, no question about it.
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I agree. Too many lunar orangutan orgys in Dream Theaters music.
 
Final thoughts on Systematic Chaos...

Constant Motion - Pummeling music, great drums, Metallica-worship vocals. Portnoy is too loud. I feel like the transition with the wishy-washy chords going into the chorus is rather dull. It builds like a 90’s rap-rock song. Chorus is solid, but again - Portnoy’s vocals are too loud. That small vocal bridge section is the coolest part of the song (“obsessive yearning…”). We get our first Portnoy “UGH!” Real nice, Mike. Fits real well. :facepalm:

Forsaken - I actually really love this song. It’s not perfect, but it’s definitely my third favorite on the album. Call me crazy, but I love when Dream Theater writes these concise, goal-driven song. LaBrie sounds really good, the guitars and bass are simple but incredibly powerful, and I love Jordan’s piano work. Vampire lyrics don’t bother me.

Repentance - The groove is actually rather cool and I don’t mind the slow, droning pace. Everything is fine for 5 minutes. LaBrie sounds nice, the solo sounds nice, nothing is particularly great but it’s nice enough. This could have made a decent little mellow section of the 12-step suite. Unfortunately the entire second half of the song is worthless. Self-indulgent, poorly-acted radio drama that follows a loose theme and does not focus on the actual theme - alcoholism. I get that it relates, but it doesn’t work. Why this album is so obsessed with hearing people talk, I’ll never know. Plus, Akerfeldt's voice is so hilariously specific that it takes me right out of the song.

The Dark Eternal Night - The riffs, holy hell the riffs! What an amazing piece of heavy metal. Portnoy’s drums are perfectly synched with everything and it works really well. Unfortunately - the vocals are not great. LaBrie should not be singing on this song, Portnoy is too loud and also doesn’t have the conviction in his voice to deliver the melodies. This is something that should be on a new Symphony X album. Russell Allen would absolutely slay this song. The lyrics are also terribly arranged. “His. Most. Shock. Ing. Mysteries.” There’s just no ear for the flow of a melody during those verses. The chorus is good, though, and as I said, the music is simply astounding. Best heavy riffing they’ve done since ToT. Too bad about the vocals. I dig the hell out of the HP Lovecraft-lifted lines, though.

Prophets of War - Muse worship. The lyrics are good on LaBrie’s part, but the song is such a production onslaught that I cannot appreciate it. It sounds forced, weird, and ultimately poorly conceived. The fan-shouting section is bizarre and mixed poorly. They’ve got 60 people chanting and it sounds like 6. Portnoy’s absolutely horrendous rap-talk section is the worst part of the entire album. His vocals even cover up LaBrie’s best vocal on the album - “a change from what it’s been!” at the end. Easily the worst song on the album.

The Ministry of Lost Souls - An emotional tour de force. It builds so slowly, but it does so with quality melodies and by the time the musical break kicks in it feels earned. I think the instrumental goes on for too long, but I don’t find it “unnecessary” the way that others do. This is one hell of a song. The live version on Chaos in Motion has an incredibly raw, emotional vocal performance from JLB (unfortunately Petrucci’s guitar is out of tune).

In The Presence of Enemies - A simply amazing song. The first half is just perfect Dream Theater and the second is wicked as hell. It reaches a level of darkness and malevolence I didn’t know was capable from this band. It reaches Opeth levels of malevolence. I could do without the talking parts - why are they covering up everything LaBrie sings?! - but they aren’t frequent enough to ruin the song.

Systematic Chaos has both grown on me and infuriated me more over the last week. It’s better than I remember it being, despite having so many things wrong with it. Octavarium hinted at the cracks, SC shows them unabashedly, and BC&SL is a broken wall.

A lot of the album sounds like production tricks - mostly due to the vocals. The songs aren’t written for LaBrie (except for Ministry and Forsaken), they are written for Portnoy (or James Hetfield). I actually enjoy the live versions of some of these songs better, like Constant Motion and TDEN, because LaBrie is as loud as he should be. I don’t understand why Portnoy’s chaingang tuff guyz are mixed louder than the lead fucking singer. I know that Petrucci wrote the majority of the lyrics on this album, but it sounds like a bunch of melodies conceived by Portnoy. Even in the making of documentary you can hear Portnoy dictating how LaBrie should sing the songs. It’s interesting that their previous heavier album (Train of Thought), sounds much more natural for LaBrie. Also, this was recorded after a long break, so I can’t blame his performance on lack of rest - it’s clearly a conceptual issue.

The biggest issue with this album is also its greatest strength: Mike Portnoy. His drumming is absolutely insane on this album, at turns restrained, mature, and clever or insanely over-the-top with technicality. Unfortunately, his vocal dominance ruins so many songs. The guy actually has a good voice, a very good voice - for a backup singer. He sings (and writes) like a drummer, the most important thing is the rhythmic and melodic accuracy, not the delivery. His staccato lyrics (and Petrucci's staccato lyrics) on Constant Motion, Prophets, and TDEN sound and read like notes on a piece of paper - zero emotion. Or rather: feigned emotion. In fact, there it is, the issue with this album: it tries too hard. It feels forced. It feels overthought and underfelt. Even the great songs (and there are two) seem to be lacking personality.

Oh well, ya can’t like ‘em all. I can’t wait for the next album, which I had previously considered to be the worst in the entire discography.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
A lot of the album sounds like production tricks - mostly due to the vocals. The songs aren’t written for LaBrie (except for Ministry and Forsaken), they are written for Portnoy (or James Hetfield).
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It's really a shame that after seeming mostly recovered from the whole food poisoning thing and turning in what many consider his best live vocal performance (Score), he gives the worst vocal performance on any studio album and it's really not his fault. Even FII, while he doesn't sound great on that the material accommodates his more limited range and less powerful voice. Kevin Shirley also helped mask it with the production tricks. I think this was the beginning of a second slump for JLB, that really continued until Portnoy left the band. I'm still not sure whether that's a coincidence or not, but I vividly remember seeing them on the Iron Maiden tour and his voice was really not good. The two times I've seen them since he was great.

I'm slowly making my way through the live stuff from Systematic Chaos still. Even though there's no Ytse Jam release, there's a lot of stuff. The Chaos in Motion DVD alone is something like 6 hours of material altogether. I'm mostly finished with disc 2 and will try to watch disc 1 tonight. I think I've only seen it once, I remember it being pretty exhausting to get through.

But on top of that, there's also two official fan club CDs: The first is taken from two nights on the progressive nation tour and is appropriately titled "Progressive Nation 2008". I think the whole thing is on youtube, but is pretty easy to find for download (I have both bootlegs if anybody wants them). Honestly only really for the completists, although it has some rarities. You get a live version of Misunderstood, which is not on any other live album or ytse jam release, and the one and only performance of Repentance (although Mike Portnoy played it with Flying Colors years later). The Repentance is pretty interesting because it has Mikael Akerfeldt doing vocals and he does a good job. It does a good job at not being redundant with the Chaos In Motion DVD, the only repeat is ITPOE Part 1, which doesn't even really count since it's only half the song. Sound quality is really bad though.


This was also the 15th anniversary of I&W and they performed it in its entirety several times. The other fan club CD is one of those performances. Haven't heard that yet.
 
Mosh said:
It's really a shame that after seeming mostly recovered from the whole food poisoning thing and turning in what many consider his best live vocal performance (Score), he gives the worst vocal performance on any studio album and it's really not his fault. Even FII, while he doesn't sound great on that the material accommodates his more limited range and less powerful voice. Kevin Shirley also helped mask it with the production tricks. I think this was the beginning of a second slump for JLB, that really continued until Portnoy left the band. I'm still not sure whether that's a coincidence or not, but I vividly remember seeing them on the Iron Maiden tour and his voice was really not good. The two times I've seen them since he was great.
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Absolutely, this is certainly JLB's worst vocal performance on an album. I think it was the perfect storm of ill-suited vocal melodies, micromanaging from Portnoy, poor mixing/mastering, and possibly limited vocal takes in the booth. It's an even bigger shame because the rest of the music on SC is actually well-mixed (despite being brickwalled in mastering).
 
Watching Chaos In Motion now.

  • Video quality has obviously taken a dip. I get what they were going for, but why was this an official release and not a Ytsejam thing? For example, The Orpheum is a really beautiful venue and the sound/video quality is noticeably better in the songs filmed there. I think it would've been better if that was the DVD and the other footage got compiled in a Ytse Jam type release. Especially given their first DVD with a brand new label, you'd think they'd do something with higher quality. This is worse than some of the bootlegs at times.
  • Right off the bat, JLB does not sound good. I've heard that JLB sounded pretty good on this tour and MP just happened to pick the worst performances on this tour, but considering how many different shows are covered that seems a bit far fetched. Seriously what happened to JLB?
  • But I feel bad criticizing the guy because watching this footage makes it obvious that he's probably the most genuinely likable guy in the band.
  • Constant Motion is a solid opener, but I don't think they'll ever come close to As I Am for concert openers.
  • JP already flubbed the first solo.
  • Panic Attack is way too slow. This is such a lifeless performance of the song, what gives?
  • One big positive is the "Setlist" for this DVD. By far my favorite thing about these DT dvds is how they were conscious of not repeating songs too much from older DVDs. Not counting Ytse Jam releases or the songs part of the medley, there isn't a single song on here that was on a DVD before with this lineup. Only three songs had appeared on DVDs with other lineups.
  • Blind Faith on an official DVD was long overdue. This version is OK, not as good as the mexico city recording on the ytse jam dvd. JLB sounds bad and the audio quality is pretty bad. They do a great job on the instrumental part though.
  • The extended Surrounded is awesome. Love when they reimagine old songs like that. Definitely one thing that makes this DVD worth checking out.
  • Is that Stu Block in the documentary footage?? In between Surrounded and Dark Eternal Night.
  • The vocals in TDEN are so heavily processed that they can't do them justice live.
  • I like Jordan's keyboard sounds in the context of DT songs/jams, but when he is soloing by himself it just sounds like noise. Granted I feel the same way when metal/rock guitarists solo like that.
  • On the other hand, JR totally butchers the Scarred and Take the Time solos. I understand he might want to put his own flair on them, but it's like he's not even really trying.
  • So I totally forgot that the Mikael's verse in Repentance is actually on this DVD. It's not the whole song, but it's everything he did so turns out that bootleg isn't quite as special in that regard. :p Not sure why they didn't just include the whole song.
  • @MrKnickerbocker I don't think Petrucci's guitar is out of tune during Ministry of Lost Souls, it sounds to me like the chorus effect is on a bad setting. I noticed the same thing on an earlier song too. I think it was Scarred.
  • Faintly hearing Symphony X playing during some of the backstage footage is probably the closest we're going to get to a SX live DVD.
  • The DT medleys have had mixed results for me. Some, like Instrumedley, are awesome. Schmedley Wilcox is a dud though. It just feels sloppily pasted together. I would've much rather seen them pick one of those songs and just play that.
Overall, an OK dvd. I think most DT fans would agree that it's the least essential of them all, but at the same they do a really great job of giving each DVD its own value. There are always a healthy amount of songs that aren't on any other DVD and plenty of bonus features. If you can get past JLB's inconsistencies and the lower audio/video quality, you'll probably get some enjoyment out of it. I don't recommend watching the first disc in one sitting though. I had to take several breaks.
 
Either the band was complete shit on that tour or MP certainly picked some of the absolute worst performances. JLB really sounds bad on the majority, JP messes up multiple solos, sound quality is shite...it's just bizarre. There was no reason to release this as official, like you said @Mosh

As for Ministry of Lost Souls, it definitely sounds out of tune to me. I'm not sure how he fixes it midway through the song though. If you look at his face during that intro, he very much seems like he's trying not to let it show that he knows it's out of tune. I really love this live performance despite it, though, JLB's voice is super raw but it works so damn well. Portnoy also seems to really be into it.

Mosh said:
  • But I feel bad criticizing the guy because watching this footage makes it obvious that he's probably the most genuinely likable guy in the band.
  • Faintly hearing Symphony X playing during some of the backstage footage is probably the closest we're going to get to a SX live DVD.
  • The DT medleys have had mixed results for me. Some, like Instrumedley, are awesome. Schmedley Wilcox is a dud though. It just feels sloppily pasted together. I would've much rather seen them pick one of those songs and just play that.
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- Funny, after watching the DVD and documentary I thought that the most genuinely likable guy in the band seemed to be Jordan by a mile. JLB seems like a lead singer: fun when he's in the right mood and feels like putting on a show, otherwise he's a complete professional and wants nothing to do with press/fan interactions which can make seem entitled.
- There's actually a small clip during the end credits of the documentary with Romeo, Russell, and Rullo from Symphony X as the head up to the stage.
- Schmedley Wilcox is definitely a clunker. It does nothing for me. IMO, it points to how half-cocked and misguided the band was during this period. It pales ludicrously in comparison to Instrumedley.
 
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