Warthur With the 2020 COVID lockdowns shutting down touring, many musicians were left at a loose end - and with their other projects on hold as a result, the members of Liquid Tension Experiment finally had a chance to make that third album at long last. Something of a thaw had come between Mike Portnoy and the Dream Theater camp after the initial shock of his departure from the band - he'd done drums on John Petrucci's solo album a little earlier - but even so, it was still something of a surprise to hear that the quartet were still interested in working together, having largely let the project lie fallow for decades.

The album finds them picking up where they left off, continuing to present more focused, composed songs (for those who must have improv, a bonus disc on some editions comes with an hour of jams), and with production values which really help tease out the nuances of the material. Sounding more like the bizarre offspring of prog metal and Mahavishnu Orchestra-style jazz fusion than ever, and with a little humour splashed here and there, this might in fact be their best album yet - with nothing to prove, they can just get out there and see where the music takes them.

martindavey87 'Liquid Tension Experiment 2' picks up exactly where its predecessor left off, reuniting John Petrucci and Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater, with Tony Levin of King Crimson and Jordan Rudess, who would join Dream Theater shortly after the release of this album. Noticeable immediately is how much more complete and richer this record sounds when compared to the bands first outing. Not as self-indulgent, nor full of improvised jams, the songs sound a lot more structured, organized and consistent.

As you would expect, the musicianship between the four members is astounding, with everyone being given ample opportunities to show off their skills. "Often imitated, rarely duplicated". Few artists have this kind of connection with one another. These guys are all masters of their respective instruments.

While this album is overall a stronger release than their debut, there are still a few weak tracks. In fact, it's the last three songs that slow things down a lot, as the first half, in particular, 'Biaxident', 'Another Dimension', 'When the Water Breaks' and in my opinion the groups finest work, 'Acid Rain', are all instrumental classics that are rife with incredible technical playing.

Of the two Liquid Tension Experiment albums, this is definitely the better one. Less pretentious than the first, 'Liquid Tension Experiment 2' is a fine slab of instrumental progressive metal. Fans of Dream Theater will no doubt need this in their collection, but it's diverse enough that even casual prog fans will enjoy it.

martindavey87 Liquid Tension Experiment was formed in 1997 by Mike Portnoy and John Petrucci of Dream Theater, Tony Levin, best known for his work with King Crimson, and keyboard virtuoso Jordan Rudess (who would go on to join Dream Theater after the evident chemistry displayed throughout this project). They play instrumental progressive metal, with musicianship of the very highest standard.

While there are some people out there who aren't fans of constant shredding and noodling away and who might be discouraged from getting this album, there is a lot more on offer here than merely a competition to see who can play the fastest. Some of the music is as experimental and as obscure as the band's name. Namely, 'Chris and Kevin's Excellent Adventure', 'Osmosis' and 'The Stretch' are all rather demanding tracks which serve to see just how "out of the box" the listener can go.

But of course, this is an album featuring some of prog metals most prominent figures, and there's no way we can leave out the breath-taking acrobatics, for which we have the two best songs on the album; 'Paradigm Shift' and 'Universal Mind'. Fans of Dream Theater will definitely enjoy these tracks!

As a whole though, this album is just a bit too disjointed for my tastes. There's some incredible playing and chemistry between the members, but I usually find myself only listening to the two songs I mentioned above. On top of that, there's that blasted 'Three Minute Warning'. A 28-minute improvised jam, which, while brimming with amazing technical ability, is otherwise considerably boring. It's fine though, the band themselves acknowledge it on the back of the CD cover, stating that this song is not for the musically faint-hearted, or critics of self-indulgence.

Overall this isn't a terrible album, in fact, it is pretty good in small doses, I find. Fans of Dream Theater will definitely want this in their collections, and most fans of progressive music in general will find something here to sink their teeth into.

martindavey87 Damn, is this a tough listening experience or what?!

Now, I love Dream Theater, and of course I enjoyed their Liquid Tension Experiment side-project, so it'd make sense that when this album was released, marketed as "Liquid Trio Experiment" due to the absence of guitarist John Petrucci, it was something I had to have in my collection.

And there it shall remain until my dying days, though sadly not by choice, but more due to my obsessive collecting disorder (is this a real thing?).

'Spontaneous Combustion' is nothing more than improvised jazz fusion jams and rehearsals. It's so musically self-indulgent I struggle to see what made them think it was something worth releasing that people would want to hear. I struggle even more to comprehend the fact that there is probably someone out there that genuinely listens to this and enjoys it.

But nope. Not me.

I can appreciate the amazing chemistry and versatility of all the musicians involved, and while there's maybe a few cool "moments" dotted around, it's not something I'll ever come back to or make an effort to find among the midst of mindless self-indulgence. As a whole, the album is just boring, and features nothing of any real substance.

Plus, it irks me that these guys can release and sell an album featuring nothing more than a staggering 78 minutes of mindless noodling, and it's still better than anything I could come up with.

Sometimes it sucks being a collector.

Dellinger The second Liquid Tension Experiment album is a very similar affair to their first one, though this one only has one of those soft ballad kind of songs, it mainly has the full blown Prog Metal songs, and the improv ones. Once again I like better the metal ones, since I'm not so fond of improvs. However, my very favourite songs here, and the main reason to have this album, are "Acid Rain", and "Another Dimension", which are really spectacular. "Acid Raind" kind of reminds me of "Paradigm Shift" from the previous album, and "Another Dimension" is just heavy and excellent, with even an accordion section near the end of the song, which if not done righty would totally ruin the song, but in this case it's just great. The other great metal song would be the epic "When the Water Breaks", which is indeed very good, but perhaps a bit overlong and not as tight as the previous ones. And "Biaxident" would be for me the more boring (and softer) of the metal songs, though it still has some very good moments.

As I said, I'm not particularly a big fan of improvs, but I still can enjoy them, and this ones are rather nice, particularly "Chewbacca", which has a very nice hard rock riff. Not much more to say about then anyway. And the album ends with the only straight ballad, which once again is nice but nothing that I really crave to listen to.