The album opens with "On the Backs of Angels" which has the classic old-school DT sound to it. There is not much originality here, but it's a great song non the less.
Next up comes the radio-hit of the album, "Build Me Up, Break Me Down". Heavy guitar riffs, catchy chorus, very mainstream-ish sound to it. It's not exactly my cup of tea, but hey, I'm not complaining... The song ends with beautifully arranged strings section that fades into....
Song #3, "Lost Not Forgotten" which has some "Under a Glass Moon" vibe to it... Very technical, progressive and yet retaining the other qualities that identify DT. The chorus is quite catchy (although some might disagree) and it's definitely not a ballad. Like in "Under a Glass Moon", which I mentioned before, Petrucci delivers here one of those mind-blowing, technical, proggy guitar solos we all love and missed...
Next comes "This Is the Life", which in my opinion is the most underrated song of the album. This is Dream Theater at its finest. This song sounds HUGE. All the elements come together to give a very epic-sounding tune. It should be noted that Petrucci plays a little Dire Straits sounding solo, on clean! Yeah, something we didn't hear in a long time.
Track #5, Shama-... I mean, "Bridges in the Sky"! And yes, I like the sound of the shaman burping, and the choir singing "Tal Museri". Jokes aside, it's a very strong track. I feel like mentioning LaBrie, who did a fantastic job on this one. The chorus is my favourite part, it's an ear-worm... oh, great, now it's stuck in my head for the next few days
Song 6 is the much anticipated "Outcry", a song that I didn't really like at first... it's very complicated, progressive to the extreme and not very melodic at times. It may throw some less-hardcore listeners off, but I guarantee that given enough time - it will grow on you. If nothing else, I'm sure it's quite an experience to see this song performed live, especially the instrumental section in the middle of the song (which might be the craziest thing since "The Dance of Eternity")
Coming up is the 2 song combo that raises the album to a whole new level. "Far From Heaven" and "Breaking All Illusions" follows an established formula of "Vacant" and "Stream of Consciousness" or "Wait For Sleep" and "Learning to Live". A quiet piano-vocal ballad followed by an epic that redefines the word 'epic'.
And no, this is not an exception. "Far From Heaven" is filled with emotion and it delivers what I personally have been asking for a long time... Jordan Rudess playing a melodic piece without his signature scale-runs and hyperspeed finger movements. James LaBrie does an amazing job at not only filling the song with sincere emotions, but also writing the lyrics, which I think many of us can relate to.
Following "Far From Heaven", and sharing with it some common themes is my favourite song of the album - "Breaking All Illusions".
Without much exaggeration, I think it is the best DT song since Octavarium, and probably 3rd best since Six Degrees.
The song combines all the elements that I personally love about DT, it's very melodic, progressive, has a beautiful, beautiful solo that starts very soft and touching and grows into this big epic part that would make David Gilmour say: "dude...."
The song culminates in a grand crescendo of all the instruments playing that simple theme we already heard in "Far From Heaven", but to such effect that it gives me goosebumps every single time.
The album ends with another ballad, "Beneath the Surface".... but not really. The album ended with the epic ending of "Breaking All Illusions", this song is the cool-down... as described by the man himself, it's the song you hear as you see the ending credits rolling and people start getting up and leaving, and only the most faithful fans are staying around till the very last second.
Not to diminish from the song's quality, it's a great ballad, and there's nothing shameful in being the 'ending credits song'.
To sum it up, I think it's one of the better DT albums, being up there with such classics as Six Degrees and Awake. When I heard that Mike Portnoy was leaving, my initial fear was that on the next record we'll have uncontrolled shredding and 10000 notes per second playing by Petrucci and Rudess... but no, quite the contrary. This might be one of the most melodic albums coming from the prog-metal giants, focusing more on themes and orchestration than mindless speed... which is always a blessing. The quality of the sound is also worth mentioning, all the instruments sound very clear and yet not over the top - all thanks to the mixing jedi master - Andy Wallace.
Wow if you made it so far into the review, you guys are troopers out there...
Actually, if you've gotten that far, you need to ge-
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