• Artist / Title: Dream Theater: Octavarium
• Month Reviewed: August 2005
• Format: CD
• Buy:

I will begin by saying that I think this is the bands best album to date! Yep, even better than Scenes From a Memory and Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence. Whether you like it heavy, complex, melodic, flash, you got it all on this 70+ minute CD. There really isn’t one single bad track on it. I have played it maybe in excess of 100 times (it’s in the car!) and have yet to grow tired of it. Despite sounding like Muse on track 6 ‘Never Enough’, the album cannot be faulted.

Featuring great performances all round, all the songs are infuriatingly melodic, yet heavy at the same time, but not in a Megadeth/Metallica way. The title track is simply awesome, as it throws in the entire kitchen sink of prog in an endless sequence of melodic themes and stellar playing.

In addition to all this, there is some great orchestral playing, particularly moving on the excellent Sacrificed Sons and the coda to the title track.

Yep, this is GREAT!!!!!