Review by Saxy S for Dream Theater - Train of Thought (2003)

There comes a time in every musicians career where they hit a proverbial brick wall in their compositions and their fans begin to turn on them before they become a legacy act. It happened to Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Anthrax, and even more so recently with a band like Mastodon. In many cases, the pivot happens when a band begins to commercialize their sound for a wider audience. Never has this been more true than the undeserved levels of vitriol that Metallica received with the self titled album from 1991 and the rest of their 90s work.

The same can be said for Dream Theater. The legendary progressive metal act is responsible for three of the genres most essential albums, even if they are not among the best in the subgenre. Following the bands great 2002 album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, the band quickly returned to the studio to record the follow-up, Train of Thought, which was released within the next calendar year! And at this point, I already had my suspicions about this album: the rollout for this album was far too short and abbreviated for it to possibly be as good (or better) than last years Six Degrees right?

Well, this is the album that led me on the path towards despising this band for quite a few years during the 2000s. As I mentioned briefly in my review for the bands 2019 album Distance Over Time, when this band became "the" progressive metal band, they stopped trying to bend the rules, and this album is exhibit A.

And here's the thing: Dream Theater were at the very least trying to fit in with the cool kids during the early 2000s, without digging into the absolute doldrums that was nu-metal at the time. But to be honest, the nu-metal elements don't even feel that significant! There might be an occasional faux rap verse on "This Dying Soul" or "Endless Sacrifice", but these are mostly in passing and only help break up the monotony that is, not just some of Dream Theater's least interesting songwriting of their careers, but also some of the most generic sounding progressive metal of the time.

This is certainly not helped by the production sounding really cheesy. Much of Mike Portnoy's drums sound thin, the guitar leads are nowhere near as memorable as the highlights from Six Degrees, and James LaBrie's vocals sound a lot less polished and generally flat throughout this record, an issue that has plagued even recent DT albums. Obviously you can't expect LaBrie to continue to sing the belting lines that existed on Images and Words as well as Awake, but even by those standards, I don't feel like their is a lot of heart going into these melodies. The album's lone saving grace is the bass work from John Myung; while the aforementioned drums feel thin, the bass does a lot of heavy lifting in carrying a lot of John Petrucci's lead guitar parts. Oh yeah, and Jordan Rudess decided to pick the absolute worst sounding synthesizers for his keyboard throughout the bands entire discography!

And where did the hooks go? "Stream of Consciousness" might have decent guitar lead as well as "This Dying Soul", but so much of this album is just not as sticky as what DT are capable of! Like who the fuck wanted to hear DT play "In the Name of God", a watered down progressive groove metal song? It feels lifeless and empty despite the fact that it is probably one of this albums least technical songs. Oh, did I mention that "Stream of Consciousness" is also a straight instrumental? Yeah, the best song on a Dream Theater album is the instrumental!

All of this is based on the assumption that Dream Theater are the quintessential progressive metal band; there is an entire branch of progressive metal that sole purpose is to try and recreate Images and Words. As the name suggests, these guys should be pushing boundaries within heavy metal music, not maintaining status quo for almost a decade. Train of Thought feels like a watered down version of Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence and what's even worse is that even Dream Theater knows it, so much so that they released Six Degrees again in 2005 under the pseudonym Octavarium. 

And with all of that being said, I still can't call this DT's worst album. That honour belongs to Systematic Chaos from 2007, as it shows us a band that does not give a shit about their own music and created something that was formulaic and generic; quite the task for a progressive metal album! I give Train of Thought at least a little bit of credit for trying to do something creative and unique on the surface, but it is literally just surface level changes. St. Anger might be the equivalent of a musical dookie, but it is Death Magnetic that wreaks of non-effort. Let me know when DT are back to making soulful music again.