Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos

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Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos
Roadrunner

So here we are yet again, with a new Dream Theater album for me to sink my teeth into. It would seem that I'm in the minority in regards to their last album, Octavarium. Lots of people liked that album, particularly the last two songs. Someone call the Smithsonian, the missing link has been found and it listens to Dream Theater! Seriously, I had to sit through both Sacrificed Sons and Octavarium when I watched the band live and I can swear on my Blind Guardian cd's that the entire crowd was in a deafening silence of complete boredom in that 40 minute musical black hole. Then they played a medley of Pull Me Under and Metropolis and everyone suddenly remembered why Dream Theater was a good band again. Ok, I've gone a little off topic, but rest assured, I'm nowhere near done trashing Sacrificed Sons. You can bet on it.

Anyway, the new album is called Systematic Chaos. The first question is, is it better than Octavarium? Why, yes. Yes it is. A thousand times yes. Octavarium was salvaged by three songs in particular: Panic Attack, These Walls and The Root Of All Evil. Lots of Dream Theater fans hate those first two mentioned, but they can go write their own damned reviews if they want. I can easily say that Systematic Chaos' highs trumps the highs that Octavarium had. Octavarium is the band's worst album in my opinion, in case you haven't figured it out by now. And yes, I do remember that the band has an album by the name of Falling Into Infinity in their catalouge and no it is not worse than Octavarium. Any album that has a song of the caliber of Trial Of Tears cannot be worse than Octavarium. I have spoken and fuck Octavarium one last time because it deserves another knock against it. Send angry emails to the trash bin.

Ok! I swear I'm gonna talk about Systematic Chaos now.

The strength of Systematic Chaos lies mostly between two songs (actually three but I'll get to that in a bit) - In The Presence Of Enemies and The Ministry Of Lost Souls. Between these two songs, there's half the album's running time: a little over 40 minutes of orgasmic Dream Theater brilliance. First I'll talk about The Ministry Of lost Souls, which clocks in at just under 15 minutes. The song has a very slow build led by Jordan Rudess' keys that slowly hypnotizes the listener. This keeps on going up until about 7 or 8 minutes in, when the band comes in full force and unleashes arguably their best solo section since Beyond This Life from Metropolis Part 2: Scenes From A Memory. No description of what follows is needed, any seasoned Dream Theater fan knows what this band can do and they are in top form during the next six minutes. The song slows back down for the last few minutes, putting a fitting cherry on top of this delicious prog metal sundae. I should note that the lyrics to this song (and much of the album, really) are really dark, almost occult-ish in spots.

Then there is In The Presence Of Enemies, the album's true crowning achievement, despite some questionable decisions made by the band in regards to its placement in the track order. Now it would seem that the band had a dilemma, since the album doesn't actually have a strong opening track besides the first bit of In The Presence Of Enemies. So what they did was this: instead of putting the hefty 26 minute track in the opening spot, they instead chopped it in two, messed around with the arrangement in the middle, and placed the first 9 minutes of the song as the opener and the remaining 17 minutes as the album closer. Its a bold idea, but as a result something gets lost in the process. The first part is truly something to behold, the opening few minutes really reminds me of Rush, along with all the usual Dream Theater prog influences (chiefly Kansas and Yes). The song continues to build up up until the 9 minute mark, where it all ends and the second song Forsaken starts. So what happens? By the time you get to the second part - 50 minutes later - all the momentum that gained from the first part has been long lost. Slowly the second part gathers steam once again and this time the band takes advantage of it, going into another one of those multi-layered solo sections where all the individual members (besides LaBrie of course) go wild, amazing the listener all over again. I went ahead and put the two parts of the song back together on a cdr, and the limitations of the decision to divide it really becomes apparent. Nonetheless, I can easily say that In The Presence Of Enemies is the band's best epic long-ass song since A Change Of Seasons, easily mopping the floor with Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence and Octavarium.

Oh yea, the album has five other songs and I haven't lost any steam from writing those last two paragraphs. Forsaken is the shortest song, serving as the album's single song. This song easily fits in with previous songs like You Not Me and I Walk Beside You, basically a blatant attempt at getting the band radio airplay. Despite these unfavorable comparisons, Forsaken isn't half bad, much better than those two mentioned song. It wouldn't have felt out of place on LaBrie's last solo album, Elements Of Persuasion. Next up is Constant Motion, one of the two controversial songs on the album among Dream Theater fans. Perhaps inspired by playing Metallica's Master Of Puppets live few years back, this track is pretty much a thrash metal homage. The riffing is totally borrowed from Testament's Over The Wall while LaBrie tries his best James Hetfield impersonation. My biggest gripe against this song is Mike Portnoy's insistence of handling some of the lead vocals during the verses. I never had a problem with Portnoy's background vocals before (albeit he never was very good to begin with), but his out-of-tune voice really brings the song down. The song would had come across much better if James LaBrie handled all of the vocals, or at least could had borrowed one of the guest vocalists wasted on Repentance (sit tight, I'm getting to that) and used them on this instead. Chris Jericho isn't doing anything these days, could had given him a slice of pizza and a subway token and he'd be set. (I'm kidding. Jericho you rule! Come back to Raw dammit.) Closing out the good portion of the album (Constant Motion just barely squeaks into the good column) is The Dark Eternal Night, the other song that has Dream Theater fans' panties in a bunch. On this song the band is pretty much going into an all out tech prog metal territory, something not unlike Meshuggah (or some other band like them but was actually good at it). This track has some of the album best time changes and passages, especially one about 4 minutes in. I like this song. I guess that's it in regards to the song.

So I've gotten this far and haven't really trashed the album yet (besides that small gripe about In The Presence Of Enemies being two tracks and Portnoy's laughable attempt at singing on Constant Motion...gotta take the bad with the good sometimes). Is it possible that Dream Theater has made another album that's back-to-front greatness like Awake Or Scenes From A Memory? Sadly, it isn't. There are two huge black spots in the middle of the album, the festering heaps being Repentance and Prophets Of War. I have a small list of Dream Theater songs that I can truly say that I flat out hate. On that small list are Another Day (Kenny G wanna-be fuck off!), Take Away My Pain (by shooting the master tapes of this song into the sun), Goodnight Kiss (I'll never stop chuckling whenever I hear LaBrie sing the lyric "I'm just a poor girl"....teehee) and the aforementioned audio latrines Sacrificed Sons and Octavarium. Well, this list just got two new inductees, because Repentance and Prophets Of War are jaw-droppingly terrible.

Repentance is the fourth installment of Portnoy's "Alcoholic's Anonymous Suite". The previous installments were The Glass Prison, This Dying Soul and The Root Of All Evil. The quality of this "suite" has declined slowly as it goes further and has outlived its welcome. This fourth song is easily the worst yet. Its painfully slow, showing a Pink Floyd influence pretty much to a fault. I hate Pink Floyd and any reminder of their dreadful excuse for music is simply not welcome to my ears. The second half of this ten minute snoozefest has several guest musicians waste away an afternoon recording those testimonies one hears during an AA meeting. The list of wasted talent is painful to read: Mikael Akerfeldt (Opeth), Daniel Gildenlöw (Pain Of Salvation), Neal Morse (ex-Spock's Beard), Steve Wilson (Porcupine Tree), Chris Jericho (awesome wrestler and Fozzy vocalist) and Steve Vai (you know who he is). I almost wanna bash my skull on my desk with the thought of what could have been.

And to close, we have Prophets Of War, a pitiful mess of a song with lyrics that deal with the war in Iraq. Pretty much take any liberal know-it-all's thoughts regarding the handling of the war in Iraq and add in music that even Pain Of Salvation would had rejected for Be. (Obligatory pot-shot: Be sucks). The end result is truly worthy of being a contender for the worst Dream Theater song ever.

I think I've gotten my point across. Could have been a 9/10 if the band had enough sense to delete Repentance and Prophets Of War while opening the album with a complete In The Presence Of Enemies (and Portnoy shutting his yap and sticking to what he does best). But despite these few low-points, you still have a good album that'll stand up against the classics.


01. In The Presence Of Enemies - Part I
02. Forsaken
03. Constant Motion
04. The Dark Eternal Night
05. Repentance
06. Prophets Of War
07. The Ministry Of Lost Souls
08. In The Presence Of Enemies - Part II

Score: 7/10

P.S.: I know I gave it a decent score back when I originally reviewed it, but one last time to clarify my stance on it as of October 17, 2007: FUCK OCTAVARIUM.