DREAM THEATER — Train of Thought (review)

DREAM THEATER — Train of Thought album cover Album · 2003 · Progressive Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
CCVP
This albums is quite a mixed bag: the instrumental part is perfect, but this is LaBrie's worst album

Train of Thought is Dream Theater's darkest and heaviest album and was made having those things in mind. They wanted to make an album that was as heavy as they could possibly be, an album that could be able to excite, agitate people every time it was played, an album to explore the darker and heavier edge of their music, and that was exactly the final result. Train of Though is truly what it was intended to be, but that caused some problems.

The biggest problem, as in all Dream Theater albums from Images and Words on, are LaBrie's vocals. LaBrie, since ever, is Dream Theater's weakest member and in fact he contributes negatively to the band, dragging it down, since his vocals are not on a par with the rest of the band. Here things get worse because he tries to be a badass and evil like the rest of the band and fails miserably in doing it simply because his voice does not allows him to do so. Something similar happened when they made a Master of Puppets cover, but in MoP he was much worse.

The other problem was not so bad, but it is considerable. Here, because of the heaviness, Jordan Rudess's keyboards, sometimes, simply cannot be heard. I really tried, but sometimes it is really difficult to find Rudess in the songs. That is just not good, since Rudess is a very important member of Dream Theater's instrumental session. However, that is only a problem in the heaviest songs, such as Honor Thy Father, As I Am and This Dying Soul.

About the songs, musicianship and other features, there are somethings i would like to state:

Leaving those problems behind, this albums is an amazing display of great musicianship. As always, specially since Jordan Rudess became a full member of Dream Theater, their music is an incredible extravaganza of musical skills with insanely difficult songs to play because the songs are fast and technically demanding. Here, mainly because the albums is so heavy, the lights are mostly (in my opinion) on Myung and Portnoy.

Most songs of this album are very good. The only one that, in my opinion, is subpar, when compared to the rest of the album, is the song Honor Thy Father. The highlights here goes to the last three songs of the album: Vacant (an interlude to Stream of Consciousness), Stream of Consciousness and In the Name of God. Those three are all the way top Dream Theater-like songs.

Grade and Final Thoughts

Although this album have some problems, specially concerning LaBrie's vocals, the instrumental session, with its many good attributes, was able to avoid and surpass the negative points here. So, because of the constancy of good songs all through the album and the awesome closing (Vacant, Stream of Consciousness and In the Name of God), I think this album deserves 4 stars.
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