Hey
@S E P H, have you seen the documentary on YouTube about Dream Theater's post-Portnoy drummer auditions? There's a good chance you have, since the video's from 2011, but it is super awesome.
Yes I have, some good stuff in there. I think of the drummers they were also looking at (based upon my recollection) and quite significantly was that German drummer from Obscura, Grossman I believe. I am not a fan of technical death anymore, but that dude is an unbelievable drummer. After the exodus of Portnoy, it shows how much he meant to their songwriting process. For example, even though
Black Clouds and Silver Linings and
Systemic Chaos aren't the best that Dream Theatre has to offer (I do love BC&SL though), those albums absolutely destroy anything made in the Mike Mangini era.
Don't get me wrong I still enjoyed parts of the self-entitled album and
The Astonishing and they're not bad albums by any stretch of the imagination, you can feel a lack of passion. Mangini is an amazing drummer, his technical skills are some of the best in modern era where he is easily top 3-5 in the world. However, I will be even the first to admit that as a guy who loves the technical portion of music many musicians who are very technical lose a lot of melody in their music. Mangini is a perfect example of what I mean here, his skills are insane, but his song writing has to be some of the dullest I've heard in any band that I love.
Which brings up another point, the past two months I've been slowly listening to Rush's entire discography and man the their song writing was the opposite direction of Dream Theatre with Mangini. I thought I would've never enjoyed some of their earlier albums, but I gotta give credit where it's due and say that
Fly By Night is an amazing album - not a bad song there.
2112, what can you say more than this classic?
Moving Pictures is still my favourite album along with
A Farewell to Kings from what I've listened to thus far, but I totally get now why the true Rush fans say that is the best album (2112). The two best songs which I think absolutely captured their prime in song creation has to be on
Hemispheres though, I don't know if you're ever listened to
Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres or La Villa Strangiato, but you need to like right now. True that they're longer songs, but man the creativity and all musical elements you want in music are all displayed in these two masterpieces. I am currently on
Signals and just heard another really underrated track by them called
Chemistry.