Re: NEW DREAM THEATER SONG - ON THE BACKS OF ANGELS - ON YOUTUBE
The beginning atmosphere is interesting and nice. Intro has good melodies but there's an inharmonious melody on it that changes the whole ambiance of it. Intro's length arranged perfectly, not too long nor too short, the rising part with powerful riffs and keyboard melodies is also nice. Irregular rhythm part is kind of forced and doesn't work for me. I know it's one of the constituents of progressive metal but Dream Theater made a lot better of that in terms of rhythms. But Jordan Rudess' keyboard touches to that part saves it. LaBrie's enter to that song is terrible, I don't feel any metal or rock on it, just saying some stuff. Thank god the backing riffs are not that bad. The short Petrucci solo is nice also the only part that LaBrie performed well comes after that solo, impressive, emotional but not too much emotional. The slow part is also great, Petrucci's solo is cool but the shredding stuff at the end doesn't go up well with it. The ending could have done better.
The star of the song is definitely Jordan Rudess, great melodies with great timing.
I'm not really a fan of LaBrie's voice. I mean his natural voice. He had decent vocal melodies in his career (for example Metropolis or Learning to Live) but his natural voice is not that good. And with bad vocal melodies, he just hurts my ears. I couldn't hear Mike Mangini, there's no real drum partition. I hope there won't be a disbelief issue with him and the rest of the band, just like Jason Newsted-Metallica thing. They turned down the volume of the bass just because they didn't believe in him after losing Cliff. But I don't think that's the case here, I will look after the other songs to see what is going on about the drums.
Overall, nice song.
I hoped to get a better explanation but alas, I'm afraid my remark was interpreted in a literal way.