Systemizing Chaos

Dream Theater are releasing their 9th studio album and I believe there's no one who knows their name that treats this fact with indifference. The band that put the term "progressive" into metal hardly needs to prove anything anymore. Yes, it's been a long time since Dream Theater's music was progressive in any real sense but that's way beside the point. John Petrucci, Mike Portnoy, Jordan Rudess and John Myung play their instruments as if they were extensions of their bodies. With such remarkable ease come a lot of options, and Dream Theater can just pick and choose what kind of music to play. They just happen to like 70s prog rock and 80s heavy metal the best!
"Systematic Chaos" combines the best elements from the previous two albums and rejects most of what made fans complain. It's true that Dream Theater fans are very diverse and very hard to please, but I suspect that this album will be a lot less divisive than "Train Of Thought" with its excessive heaviness, and "Octavarium" with its obvious commercialism were. The album opens in the best way with "In The Presence Of Enemies part 1". I was getting bored of the "rock-hit" wanna-be openers of their previous two albums. This time we get a 5 minute instrumental intro, true to their Rush heritage before James LaBrie comes in. You may have noticed that LaBrie's vocals have improved greatly in "Octavarium" and the improvements remain here.
It's not a coincidence this album contains two songs that pay tribute to 80s thrash metal, both music and lyric-wise ("Constant Motion" and "The Dark Eternal Night"). Dream Theater's new label is Roadrunner and the band knows exactly how to impress them. "Systematic Chaos" also contains the first slow and mellow Dream Theater song that hasn't bored me in a while, the dark and hypnotic "Repentance". Any songs written for success? Yep, that's "Forsaken" and it rocks! And of course there are long epics like "The Ministry of Lost Souls" and "In The Presence Of Enemies part 2". It wouldn't be a Dream Theater album otherwise!
"Systematic Chaos" shouldn't surprise anyone, as Dream Theater are not up to reinventing the wheel for the second time. Its purpose is to delight your ears, and that's a success.