Dream Theater - Octavarium
Rating
RIYL
MarillionGenesis
Tool
Metallica
Loudermilk
Tracklist
1. Root Of All Evil2. Answer Lies Within
3. These Walls
4. I Walk Beside You
5. Panic Attack
6. Never Enough
7. Sacrificed Sons
8. Octavarium
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Dream Theater may very well be one of the most difficult bands to review in this day and age. Every album, every single one, is a very strong showing, but nothing changes drastically from album to album. You expect amazing musicianship that often shines bright, but sometimes is very subtle. You expect at least one overly embarrassing James LaBrie vocal line. If you don’t anticipate any of that, every Dream Theater album has probably been an absolute delight for you. But frankly, anyone who listens to Dream Theater expects that and gets it. Petrucci shreds it up with the best yet again, Portnoy’s still a monster behind the trap, and Myung’s still underrated as hell. You can’t really say much more. All you can say is whether it’s one of their stronger albums or one of their weaker, but still amazingly strong in comparison to most other music, ones.
Octavarium is rather bland compared to their strongest efforts and may be one of their weakest to date, but that is by no means an attack against the band. The only problem I had was that I’d occasionally make ludicrous comparisons, based on a three-second snippet of a song, to some horrendous band. For instance, there’s a vocal part in “These Walls” that is, for a moment, a bit too close to the chorus to Hoobastank’s “Too Little Too Late.” Then, in a flash of under-brilliance, “I Walk Beside You” brought about a faint comparison to flash-in-the-pan band Loudermilk. I don’t know why I picked up on these things, as Dream Theater could probably never play such banal music, but there are these bits that are just too unsettlingly familiar.
Of course, most minds don’t pick up on those things like I do and I can guarantee it was not intentional. In fact, I’m secretly sure that a band of Dream Theater’s stature has never even heard those two bands.
For even more praise, I didn’t notice any freakish attempts at rapping, as was found on their previous effort, Train of Thought. There are several lyrical references to that album scattered throughout Octavarium, though. My feelings on that are mixed. It’s a nice enough idea, but they really could have referenced some of their better works.
So there you have it: The small things that bothered me on this album. Still a decent Dream Theater release, still a very good album. Try your damnedest to avoid hearing it like I do and everything should be fine.
--Ben Rice
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