I figured. I guess I can't say it's TOO basic. There's plenty of content. Maybe I used the wrong word. What I meant was that it didn't have much in the way of personal insight, exactly, which isn't a requirement, of course, but makes for a more interesting read. It was a meat and potatoes review. But as far as finding out what I'm going to get when I listen to the album, you did a fine job. It was clearly expressed.

So…
I really don’t know where to begin this purge.
The beginning of the 00’s was a curve in Dream Theater’s history. Indeed, after their sumptuous “Scenes From a Memory”, the 2 band thinkers Portnoy & Petrucci decided to let the metal side of their music grow. Was it a necessity, really? I wonder when I listen to some tunes like Caught in a Web, Fatal Tragedy, or Beyond This Life… Well, nevermind, it was their choice. Unfortunately, the method to do so was disastrous.


Those cheerful sorts had the awesome idea of bringing some old CDs with them for rehearsals and composition times (they had already done this in the past but at least it was not that blatant). In their bags, some old ‘Tallica, Pantera, Tool, Muse, Radiohead, and HERE WE GOOOOO. What Portnoy called the “inspiration corner” had officially become the main composition source for the band. Hey, this riff from Pantera is nice, and what if we modify it like this… and yeah, a brand new riff!! Some people don’t care about those “details”. But for me, it’s a hell of an issue.


Of course, nothing in the world is plain originality. We all are a sum of various individualities, of personalities that have marked our existence, speaking about ways of thinking (values) or visual aspects (clothes, haircut, etc). To sum it up, nobody can build a personality by themselves. That goes for music as well. After all we could say that all music has been influenced by the cavemen’s very first rhythms. So the “inspiration” is not a problem in itself, because you can’t avoid it, whatever you do.


BUT. There’s a real line between inspiration, which is honest, natural, and shameless copy. Sometimes we don’t really know if the line has been crossed or not, but Dream Theater has us wondering. We can think of “Home” (Tool’s "46 & 2"), “Innocence Faded” (Rush’s “Red Barchetta”), “Trial Of Tears” (Allan Holdsworth), “Anna Lee” (Toto’s “I’ll Be Over You”), or “Lifting Shadows Off a Dream” (U2), “Peruvian Skies” (Metallica). Was it done on purpose or not? Well, no big deal because it only concerned some tunes here and there, nothing really serious and major to compare with all the other songs.
Since 6DOIT, it’s different. The “inspiration corner” has become a reality. Those clowns listened to some records, liked to mimic some riffs they found good, fixed them with a bunch of counter times to evade the issue, and put breaks full to bursting with waterfalls of notes played at breakneck speed. And there you have it. Here, the line between sane inspiration and blatant plagiarism has been crossed. If you disagree, then consider this :


In my opinion this album is far from being entirely bad. The 1st track, As I am, is worth a listen, especially thanks to the effective verse riff ; some parts stay very well written, like the beginning of This Dying Soul, there are some cool breaks & themes (Endless Sacrifice, Stream Of Consciousness, some parts of Honor Thy Father) and nice choruses (In The Name Of God) ; plus we appreciate the brilliant idea to insert the smooth Vacant at the 5th position, for those who had had the crazy thought to eat all this in one shot. Exactly the kind of song you would listen to 4 times in a row in order to put your brain the right way up. You will need it badly.


Indeed, little by little Train Of Thought unveils light faults which will increase in the course of the “experience” : this Labrie’s irritating attempt at mimicking James Hetfield at the end of every chorus, and abstruse guitar & keys solos - when too much shred kills shred. Then you’ll have to face the mallcore/nu-metal side of this album. If you disliked Labrie playing his new favorite game “I too want to sing like James Hetfield”, you’ll hate him even more on This Dying Soul, when his atrocious saturated voice crushes your balls ; or on Honor Thy Father, when a stinky rap crops up and the singer, crooked cap on the mug, spits his hate in the mike. WTF. During this exhausting trip, I was sinking more and more into my sofa. But hey, it’s Dream Theater, what about their music full of subtleties? To be honest, the complexity and counter times don’t make up for anything. On the contrary, they make this mess even more painful to bear. Was it a sad attempt to sound like a new kind of tech-thrash? Of course Dream Theater is skilled enough for it, but they don’t have the right feeling. They’re no Coroner, Mekong Delta or Watchtower, and only offer a thick mush of riffs where nothing flows. A true pain in the ass. This mishmash of pathetic and noisy riffs trying to be heavy with palm muting played on a landing net turned my grin of stupor into a nervous laughter.


And there is even worse.
Remember the beginning of this review. We talked about plagiarism. Listen to Endless Sacrifice : that’s Michael Jackson’s “Give In To Me” and “5 Minutes Alone” by Pantera. Honor Thy Father’s intro is Metallica’s “Damage Inc.”. And Stream Of Consciousness is nothing but “Orion + more counter times”. Are you fucking kidding me? How, tell me how can we support such recycling? That’s just unbelievable. In any normal band, if one of the members shows up with a bunch of CDs to suck all the riffs up only to spit them out in random mode, he’s kicked out of the room… or music magazines would destroy an album built like this, at least… But as for Train Of Thought (and for every album between 2001 and 2007 actually), nothing, or almost. Apparently DT has a particular status. For me it won’t be the case. Time to stop this torture.


In conclusion, Train Of Thought is not a true turd where there is nothing to salvage, but it comes close sometimes. Some good stuff here and there, 2 nice tracks (As I Am and Vacant), and a festival of second-hand creations, mixing classic DT schemes, infamous plagiarism, runs of sextuplets, nonsensical soloing for the most part, nu-metal influences (Mudvayne anyone?) and annoying singing.


Dream Theater is a strange band. After having created some personal music with digested influences, even if there were some misdemeanors, it turned the ratio upside down and played like a tribute band ; personal work becoming minority. Double ambiguity here : as they were often treated like soulless machines at the dawn of the 90s, unwinding solos and breaks neglecting the melody (remember Blind Melon’s bullshit about Pull Me Under back in 1994), when TOT came out their popularity did not stop growing. What staggers me the most is that plenty of metalheads agree without flinching, denying obvious facts, furiously attacking detractors, so long as they get their dope, power and speed, whatever the cost. The fact that DT dudes are great musicians shouldn’t allow them to suck others’ work up. All the albums from 6DOIT to Systematic Chaos raise an ethical problem, a problem of integrity. I suspect that integrity can partially dissolve itself in business world, but there is a minimum rate to be respected, below which a band shouldn’t be recognized as honest. This minimum rate of honesty, Dream Theater didn’t respect it during this period of time, and in my opinion Train Of Thought hit rock bottom.

but I hope this helps somewhat.

I love the way no one even replied to the OP.

Oh btw, this review has been rejected due to its "awful formatting and poor writing".
Is it that bad? Really?

Thanx to everyone who replied with useful remarks to my message about Sodom. As I said, the point was not to talk about the music/content (look for the albums in the discography), rather about the features of the edition.
I will take everything into consideration and if I get more inspiration, I will work on the text more. Cheers.

Nothing.

Honestly, I never could understand what a lot of people saw in Pantera -- particularly this album -- that granted them "legendary" status. To even claim that this slab of musical illiteracy "saved" metal from its demise in its darkest moments is absurd; if anything, this album can be pinpointed as the very blueprint for some of today's mainstream "metal" bands: Slipknot, Lamb of God, Disturbed, and Nickelback (yes, you heard me right).

Another thing that irritates me about this side to Pantera is how so many of their fans didn't know or care to hear their music UNTIL after Diamond Darrell's tragic murder nearly ten years ago, performing for the infinitely awful Damageplan. All the "R.I.P. Dime" and "GETCHA PULL!" posts I see on the Web only confirm my stance on Pantera's overall fans, and it's a sad revelation that such a potential band not only turned to complete shit with THIS album, but a huge sum of the fans representing IQs that don't exceed two digits.

Aside from all the hype, let's get on with what I truly think about the album:

You'll obviously notice how this album marked the band's departure from ALL elements that made even Cowboys from Hell worth listening to: falsettos, fast-paced metal songs, complex songwriting, etc.

To transition from the majestic Power Metal to this lazy, boring pile of crud is just sad. "Walk" is obviously the worst song on this album (or any Pantera album, for that matter; that even includes the embarrassing Metal Magic), so I won't get into beating the dead horse.

Also, to be honest, I could never listen to this album in one sitting, so the most I could do was listen to separate songs in random order.

We start off with "Mouth for War", which is certainly the album's only shining moment, but not by much. The opening riff and pre-verse riff are both catchy and heavy, but the potential this one had on at least becoming a decent song is marred by Phil Anselmo's rancid horseshit "vocals" (compared to what he was capable of two albums ago, this is rightly so an insult to a legacy he could have built up on), with lyrics declaring how "tough" and "menacing" him and Pantera are; however, let's face it: if not for Anselmo being aware of that one thrash metal band from New Orleans, Pantera would have likely never made it big (it would have been for the best if they stuck to playing Judas Priest-worship metal in small clubs for the rest of their lives). Now, what about the guitars on that song? Does our guitar hero, Diamond Darrell, come saving the day with his overbearing misuse of pinch harmonics? Not really, as he tends to be repetitive with the same chord progressions throughout the song. I did find it cool that he reused that interlude riff from "Death Trap", but that's about it. Vinnie Paul just plays the same predictable shit on the drums, and it's yawn-inducing, to say the least. Well, I guess the few seconds of speed metal at the very end (akin to Black Sabbath's "Into the Void") must have given the listener a sigh of relief that this album just MIGHT not suck, after all. And then, it turns out, said listener was wrong.

"This Love" and "Hollow", two of the album's token ballads, are simply useless. I'll just talk about how much I dislike the former, however, because that one is worse than the latter (that's not to say "Hollow" is even half-decent): if you wanted to know where Slipknot found their "trademark" sound, look no further than when Mr. "Tuff Guy" Anselmo belts out "YOU TAEK DIS LUV!" at the chorus like a 'tard. The lyrics don't even make any fucking sense, and I'm afraid reciting them here would cause anyone reading this to lose significant amounts of IQ in one sitting; don't say I didn't warn you. Other than the hillbilly posturing in the lyrics, Diamond's guitars do very little to save this song from becoming a tragic shitfest; all he does is go back and forth, from random noodling to lazy chords. Oh, but there's at least DISTORTION -- "heavy", indeed.

A lot of people speaking in defense of this album like to point out how "great" the song "Fucking Hostile" is, but I really must disagree; while it is the thrashiest (but not thrash metal) song on the album, its execution is on the other end of the pole. Diamond Darrell certainly still had some tolerable riff ideas in him at this point, but it was clear that he'd already been running out of them since recording Cowboys from Hell (just listen to the nu-chugging "Primal Concrete Sledge" to see what I mean). At the very least, the song isn't your mindless, lazy chugging (unlike most of the songs).

"Rise" starts off really heavy and fast -- for up to twenty seconds, at least -- and then it becomes just another typical groove/half-thrash metal song that cues skipping. Although the vocal delivery is still just as awful elsewhere, it's nice to know that there's at least ONE Pantera song out there that isn't just about the jock-catering angst that's otherwise displayed on supremely bland songs like "Walk". Don't get your hopes up for the sake of assuming that Pantera was capable of writing intelligent or thoughtful lyrics, however, as the simple mention of them speaking out against corporate swine or trends (ironic, given how THEY jumped on the lifting of Exhorder's image and sound to avoid being a forgotten pop rock act) is a mildly disguised trick for them. (Speaking of politics, I remember being around smokers in high school that went on about this "Phil Anselmo for President" drivel; it would have been dark times indeed for proud wearers of bullet belts and spiked gauntlets...)

Anyway, I've ratted on about this album, and I certainly don't want to repeat myself on the next few Pantera songs which are just as bad as the aforementioned -- or worse. All I know is this: Vulgar Display of Power is a misrepresentation of what real thrash is all about (as well as the overall Texas metal scene; what about Helstar or Rigor Mortis, eh?), and it was the flagship album to have inspired countless of even worse bands to butcher our ears (e.g. Godsmack, Korn, Lamb of God, Limp Bizkit, HIM, Bullet for My Valentine). The very fact that people jumped on THIS album is just sad, especially considering the fact that there were much better death metal bands around that time tearing shit apart.

Had the band applied better songwriting approaches to this album in the vein of their last two albums, it likely would have been much better. It's not like I WANT to hate on this album; everyone in Pantera was at their musical prime in this era, but they put very little into it. Shit, they could have indeed become the "gods" that so many scene kids dutifully worship.

It's no wonder I can't get past Cowboys from Hell, and even that album had some really lame songs.

What we have here is not a metal album, but rather, a folk/indie/post-rock album dressed up with some superficial metal flourishes. And like most pretend metal, the metal element in Agalloch's music is only there as a marketing ploy designed to sucker naïve metal heads into purchasing their sub-par rock music. It's really not too different from how Slipknot incorporates the occasional third-rate death metal riff into their post-grunge. The intended demographic may be different for these two bands (Slipknot goes for Hot Topic teeny boppers while Agalloch targets navel-gazing neck-bearded 20-somethings) but the social engineering tactics are the same: use metal to make your musical product seem "edgy" and "nonconformist", because without the metal façade you have nothing to differentiate your boring mainstream drivel from everyone else's boring mainstream drivel. Indeed, when you strip away the the scratchy vocals, the ripped off Ulver riffs, and the "nature mystic" themes, all that's left is a miserable little Godspeed You Black Emperor cum Fleet Foxes mash-up whose only purpose is to serve as a personality accessory for those who want to appear "cultured" and "sophisticated" to their friends.

Lyrics range from unremarkable but passable nature poetry to downright awful emo whining, often within the same song. Take for example the track In the Shadow of Our Pale Companion: From what I gather, it is about a guy in existential turmoil who goes off into the forest in search of meaning. This is all well and good, until around half way through the song when the guy decides to make a "crimson offering" to the river -- in other words, cut himself like an attention seeking emo brat. Yeah, real deep Agaylloch. Next thing you know they'll write a song featuring the equally contrived emo topic of lost love. Well, actually, that's exactly what "A Desolation Song" is, whose self-pitying lovelorn lyrics resemble something My Chemical Romance would shit out. Listen up, Agalloch: if you're going to pretend to be metal, there are some things you should know. Metal isn't supposed to wallow in petty emotional problems. Keep those thoughts and feelings confined to your private facebook page. Instead, try writing about something that makes your emotional bellyaching seem trivial in comparison. It doesn't have to be nuclear war or cosmic horror, the majesty of nature is a perfectly legitimate metal subject. Just don't pollute it with the effluvia from your broken heart.

Of course, the cringe-inducing moments found in the lyrics could all be forgiven if Agalloch actually produced music of value. This is not the case. The Mantle is a lot like elevator music: it makes for pleasant, inoffensive background noise, but if you give it your undivided attention, you realize just how tedious and vapid it really is. Of course, this particular brand of elevator music is adorned with "melancholy" minor chords and "poignant" post-rock leads so it can be branded by Pitchfork as "revolutionary". But The Mantle is far from revolutionary -- in fact, it's quite formulaic. Most of the songs plod along at mid-tempo, following bland neofolk/indie progressions laid out by either acoustic strumming or arpeggiated electric guitar. Layered on top of these progressions is the lead noodling which attempts to inject some variety into the songs by introducing new moods and textures, though it ends up just floundering about through various effects pedals. Drums are relegated to timekeeping and play standard rock beats; sometimes they attempt to play in a "metal" style which results in much hilarity (prepare to for some of the wimpiest blast beats you'll ever hear). Vocals switch between a scratchy black metal rasp that has been sapped of all vitality, and lukewarm clean singing that is reminiscent of Garm's estrogen-fueled crooning on the first Ulver album. Haphazardly throw in some "eclectic" sounds like deer skull percussion, foreign film samples, and mandolin solos for diversity points with the Starbucks crowd, and BAM! You've got yourself a band that has the rebellious appeal of metal without any of that evil sounding discordance or scary non-PC ideologies.

Song writing on The Mantle is about what you'd expect from such a stylistically confused outfit. The compositions here are pointless; they are essentially collages of moods and atmospheres that express nothing outside of effete melancholy and the whole "trees are like, deep, and stuff" shtick. Actually, "composition" is the wrong word. What we really have here are jams: they ride a chord progression incessantly and noodle on top of it for twelve minutes, followed by a half-assed "climax" that is indistinguishable from the rest of the track save for being slightly less lethargic. No change in perspective is conveyed, and the listener is left wondering "was I supposed to feel something besides boredom"? To be fair, there are few captivating melodies interspersed throughout these jams, but it's really not worth subjecting yourself to the rest of this drab morass of sound just to hear them.

The scene heralds this release as some kind of innovative leap forward for metal, but in reality, The Mantle is a substandard repackaging, rebranding, and recombining of already established styles for mass consumption. This flavor-of-the-month tripe will wind up in the bargain bin as soon as the indie "metal" trend blows over.

Devastation - Leather Jack Maniac

It’s a calm Sunday evening, I’m browsing the web, whisky in hand and iTunes set to shuffle. Numerous bands come and go and I’m selling peace, riding the lightning, striking down the beast and raising the flag of hate. When my tankard is empty, I curse the gods and mentally prepare for the heavy task of getting out of my chair to replenish the fine distillate of fermented barley.

The next track comes on and tells me: Cops don’t like me, and I don’t like cops. Sirens wailing in the background, the voice races off, leaving only a trail of smoke, rubber, a face-melting riff and my curiosity. Further investigation reveals the culprit is Devastation, a Belgian thrash outfit that somehow infiltrated it’s way in my collection.

After pouring myself another glass of uisge beatha, I turn off shuffle mode and am eager to hear more of this Belgian incarnation. The album starts of with Drink Till We Die, a high paced thrash-attack shoving it’s fist in my unsuspecting face. It continues to do so, to the point I need a small break halfway through the album.

There’s no lack of in your face aggression on this 37 minute, 10 track affair, but it is lacking in other departments, to the point where I learn to anticipate it’s strikes. Every song goes all out, having the same tempo and song writing template. Furthermore, the tracks are as memorable as taking a midnight dump.

The vocalist spits out his words with vigour, the drums try and pummel you into submission and the guitars….the guitars are as boring and monotone as watching Bill Clinton count his dollar bills. There are almost no interesting, engaging or inventive riffs on this entire album. As soon as they try to be a bit flashy, the sloppiness overrules that feeling. The intro to To Serve And Protect that caught my attention earlier on is one of the only ones above average.

Well, with a high octane thrash album, the shredding solo’s must be of some quality, right? Well, it seems all of the solo’s love thrash metal so much, they must have built a time machine and set it to 1986, as there are none to be found here. The drums have a nice fill here and there, but that’s about it.

When all is said and done, this fight comes down to the judges, who give me the victory by split decision. Leather Jack Maniac isn’t a bad album, it’s just too bland to be considered a good thrash metal album. The attitude is right where it should be, but it needs much more refinement. I have enjoyed the song when it came on, but I made the mistake of turning off shuffle and listening to the entire album.

Songs to look out for: Kill The Messiah, Devastation and To Serve And Protect.

I'm wanting to delve into reviewing (metal) albums, as I feel it's a way of pushing myself to further analyse the music I listen to, instead of mindlessly listening to it. ... I haven't done any proper formatting yet. I still have to look up when to use italics and quotes on titles and band names