100th Post: It's Hard to Be A Hessian

This is my official 100th post here at Mouthful of Acid HQ, and I'm excited that I've actually been able to make this stupid, pointless thing that I do last for this long.  I was nearly certain that, like most blogs, I would start mine with all the idealism and zealousness that comes with non-profit, unsolicited Interhole "writing," but would soon devolve into me posting pictures of cute cats or meals that I ate every six months or so.  As it turns out, there's plenty of cool music to listen to in the world, and since the Interbung makes listening to it all literally free, I get to keep my iPod fully stocked with new music for the bike ride to work while I try to think of ways to compare what I'm hearing to either a) a wiener, or b) doo doo.  It usually works to take my mind off the horrible hill country and the drivers who see you as some sort of moving obstacle that it's okay to whack with the side mirror of their Ford Fusion as they drive to Starbucks.

That's why I bought a bike helmet; it makes me look ridiculous, but my head will remain intact if somebody is nice enough to just clip me going 60 miles per hour.

The other thing I spend a lot of my time thinking about on the way to work every morning while ignoring my fragile mortality is the state of music that is "popular," or more specifically, "popular to people who describe themselves as being into heavy metal."  I think that we're a very interesting lot, us metal dudes, and it lightens my heart that we encompass all the colors of the rainbow and [something about brotherhood, blah blah blah].  But it seems like less and less that I can get behind trends and new waves of things as they sweep through the landscape of our music.  I maintain that it's because I'm getting older and my inner crusty is starting to really emerge, disdainfully watching people who are younger than me enjoy music that I don't see any real value in.  Also, the people are wearing dumb or ironic t-shirts.  My crusty inner cigarette hanging from my lips, I order up another Lone Star from the bar and stand in the back where I won't get pulled into a mosh pit.

Because I wear glasses, and, since my mom no longer pays for them, I've come to realize how ridiculously expensive it is to be able to see.

Usually on my site, I stick to writing reviews and stuff for things that I like.  I like to pepper in some poorly thought out philosophical questions in the mix just to keep stuff fresh, but mostly I stick to stuff that I like, because if I don't like something, I'm not going to give it enough time for me to think of something really critical and helpful to say about it.  I hear it and go "Lame," and then I stop thinking about it.  But today I want to briefly touch on a couple of things that my inner hesher has been complaining about.

First, Djent is the new Deathcore.  People complain about Deathcore as being generic and lacking any actual style or individuality.  Indeed, it has been the whipping boy genre for people to scoff about on message boards and blog threads and things for quite a while now.  But I see a new trend rising, and you need to prepare yourself.  Because the garbage that bands like Periphery and Tesseract churn out, with their two note riffs and their clean-singing choruses doused with reverb are becoming the new musical pandemic.  Get ready to forget about Suicide Silence forever, because the new wave of Djent bands are all Suicide Silences in nerds' clothing.  These poorly conceived copycat bands to start ripping off all the lamest conventions of radio rock, mashing it together clumsily with Meshuggah's signature syncopated style, and calling it awesome.  It's not awesome.  Periphery isn't awesome.  Tesseract isn't awesome.  Djent just kind of sucks, bro.  And a few years from now after every 13 year old has been in a Djent band (and that's going to happen, too), everybody's going to be like "Muuuuhhhh, I liked Djent a long time ago lol but now it's played out learn some originality," and good old Monsoon Cobra will be sitting back listening to Meshuggah.  Because only they can do it right.

Second, bands going black metal need to stop that.  We all like things that are grim and frostbitten, and one of life's greatest pleasures is to prove yourself more kvlt than somebody else.  It's true, so don't try to deny it.  But taking that kvlter than thou attitude and transferring it into making your existing band a black metal band is annoying.  Were you in a deathrash band before?  And you guys have just changed into a black metal band?  So...I guess you got tired of doing something difficult poorly and decided to do something easy poorly then, right?  I wish I had more specific examples for bands that did this; perhaps I'm just ranting about this because of a couple of bands that will remain nameless.  I liked them, and then they inexplicably went black metal and bummed me out.

Third, I'm tired of production-based discrimination and the buzzword "overcompressed."  Cosmo Lee, of one of my favorite nerd blogs Invisible Oranges, is the most major perpetrator of this, but it's something that's spread to pandemic levels all around the metal world.  Now, I'm not saying that you should dislike something because of raw or fuzzy production; the heart wants what the heart wants, and I'll be the first to be stoked on a poorly produced crust grind demo tape that some drunk dude at a show gave me.  I love crust grind!  And there can be a certain intensity to it.  But writing off modern-sounding production just because it sounds too good seems backwards to me.  "I don't like their new album; it sounds like they can play their instruments, and you can really hear all the riffing.  And the mix is so solid!  What a shitty recording."  I find that people who gravitate toward the down and dirty style of recording have little need to actually hear the music or the riffs, and instead bask in the sound of a melange of fuzzy noise with cymbals crashing and screeching vokillz.  I've enjoyed raw and/or primitive sounding recordings; I don't know why people only want to hear that kind of shit all the time though.

I mean, if you're going to be reactionary against Killswitch Engage, maybe just listen to a band that writes good music.  You don't have to throw away well-produced music with the proverbial bathwater.

I could go on forever about things that bother me, but since I've been sitting on this crap for a couple of days now, I think it's time to stop the 100th post rant and just point out that, since my opinion doubles as fact, I'm right, and if you like Djent, going black metal, or complaining about good production, you are wrong.  Sorry.

Also, if you're under the age of 21, you shouldn't be at any show.  I hate those kids.

No, I'm just kidding.  But seriously, nobody under 21.

Victims--...in Blood

So I haven't been posting for the last week or so.  Doing this "job" is difficult enough when you consider the pay scale being $0 a year and how difficult it can be to think of things to say about penises and buttholes when you'd really rather be showering so that your wife will stop complaining.  Just because I spend all my time in front of my computer writing pointless screeds to people I'll never meet doesn't mean I don't understand the importance of personal hygiene.  I know why it's good to shower and shave from time to time; it's just that those times are, for me, few and far between.  And once you get used to the tangy zip of my body odor, it's like it's not even there.  Constantly swatting the fruit flies that follow me around, of course, is a completely different story.

Stuffing your pockets with old, moldy apricots is an ancient Babylonian way of staving off showering.

So I spent my "well-deserved" week or so off enjoying the finer things in life, like standing on a hill above the freeway hitting baseballs into traffic and headbutting raw meat after slamming two pints of whiskey in the back of a burning bus.  You know, fun stuff.  Actually, I spent most of the week playing the new Mortal Kombat on XBox 360.  It's very satisfying and time-consuming to keep pulling dudes' heads off after pummeling them with fireballs and flying kicks, and when I throw in the first complete disc of Dead Space 2 into the mix, it becomes clear that I was sitting in a darkened room dismembering fake things for an entire week.  "Take that, Mom; take THAT, Dad!  SEND ME TO A PSYCHIATRIST, WILL YOU?!?"

Like a boss.  A giant, sweaty nerd boss.

Actually, this morning I was pulled away from my nutritious and balanced breakfast by my wife, who alerted me that the tire on our only horseless carriage had gone flat.  I immediately slid my delicious Honey Bunches of Oats aside (I need the fiber) and manhandled the changing of a tire on my own automobile.  As it turns out, I have a Man Card, but the pinnacle of my manhood hinges on changing a tire on a car twice (the first time was a long time ago) and once catching a giant beetle that my wife was convinced was stuck in her hair (it was on the floor in a different room).

Again, like a boss.

So that's why I didn't post this review this morning, because I was getting my third hole punched on my Man Card by doing something that everybody is supposed to know how to do anyway.  But because I feel so buff and manly, I decided that I wanted to talk about something totally manly, namely my new favorite crust band Victims.

Victims fall in the Dis-suffix style of D-boner wankery, with a more firm lean toward punk rock than metal.  In fact, my iTunes is labeling my Victims albums as "punk," "hardcore," and "129," all of which I can get behind after having listened to them.  Except that "129" thing.  I don't know what that's trying to tell me, and instead of Googling it to see if it's actually a thing, I'm going to speculate that it is and assume that it's some sort of specific genre that I'm not cool enough to know about because I own a car and don't have filthy white dude dreadlocks.  But whatever "129" is trying to tell me, it's probably linked to the fact that Victims totally rules and makes me super happy.  ...in Blood is a whirling D-boner tornado with magnificently crunchy vokillz and those Brian Izzi-style string bends that substitute for guitar solos.  And they keep the punk rock cred rolling with a 7 Seconds-style of run time, with the longest song (by kind of a long shot, too) clocking in at a robust 3:02.

Man that takes me back to high school....

Anyway, I don't have the slightest idea how something like this was able to skirt my music sensors for as long as it did, especially considering my predilection for all things "whirling D-boner tornado," and how open I am about it.  It seems odd to me, as if I inadvertently found some kind of diamond in the rough; however, since this is the Interhole, I imagine there's a legion of fellows cracking their knuckles behind their keyboards in preparation for calling me a n00b faggot and accusing me of being a poser.  Maybe I am, sir, but I'm no n00b.  I've been posing in the hardcore scene back when America Online came on a disc and you paid by the hour for Interhole access, which came at the expense of being able to receive telephone calls on your LANDLINE TELEPHONE.

Also, there were dinosaurs.  And if you're reading this, it's increasingly likely you have no idea what I'm talking about.  But dinosaurs were giant land lizards that ate people and starred in feature films with Jeff Goldblum.  They were like dogs that would eat flesh or step on you because you were tiny--like a bug--to them.  And AOL sucked.

In summation, if you're looking for something as satisfying and fiery as a spicy curry dump and crusty as your underwear afterwards, you should be listening to Victims.  I imagine you are already, because you're so smart and you like things that burn up your speakers like the aforementioned spicy curry dump burns your tender, tender starfish.  Check out Victims on Last.fm, or steal it for all I care.  I'm not going to tell you how to do your thing, and we all know that stealing rules.  Also, you should be hearing Killer, but they've got lots of cool stuff to listen to over there.

Damn

I've got nothing really to post about this week.  Well, let me amend that; I've got a bunch of stuff that I can post about but am busy playing Mortal Kombat for XBox 360 and writing grind tunes while I drink whiskey.  It's a hard knock life.  I think I'm going to take this opportunity to officially take the week off, listen to a couple of band demos and think of things to say about boners.  Check back on Monday for more fun.

Oh, fuck yeah.

Where Have All the Diehards Gone?

I've been considering this for a while, and the more and more I think about it, the more and more it bothers me.  With the interbung and it's many, many treasures (i.e. easy stealing of music that isn't even out yet, news and fact gathering that makes being a metal nerd easy and fun, naked ladies, etc.), finding new music to nerd out to is fun and easy.  These days, if you don't want to ever listen to something twice, you don't have to, and it won't cost you even a red cent of your hard earned cash bucks, either.  Obscurity of a band means nothing, either; if you want to listen to them, all they have to have done is put up a recording somewhere and you can find it after you're done stroking your wang but before you pull your underwear back up, and nobody will say "Boo" to you unless your grandma is around or something.  And you really shouldn't be doing that in the living room of a shared living space anyway, bro.  It's gross.

As such, I would never dare say that there are no more metal nerds in the world; that would be ridiculous.  I myself am something of a metal nerd, and can tell you all sorts of not-very-interesting facts about obscure bands that I've never really listened to.  I'm sure that you could bombard me with the same kind of Trivial Pursuit-style knowledge and we could go back and forth until one of us finally slips up and says something about Celine Dion's twins or some shit, and then our corpsepaint would fall off and we'd have to acknowledge each other as Not So Grim That We Don't Know Anything About Regular-People Pop Culture.  But we aren't going to go there.  What I am saying, though, is that I see a very striking lack of Die Hard Fans these days.  Not fans of metal, but fans of BANDS.  Allow me to expound on this.

When I was in junior high and high school, nothing quite tickled me the way that Bad Religion did.  I loved Bad Religion, and I still do.  Most ungrim?  Perhaps, but I think my writeups about Dream Theater and my admission that I don't like Eyehategod should have tipped you off to that fact by now.  But I was a diehard Bad Religion fan.  I bought EVERYTHING that they had, and thought none of it sucked for the entire time that I was an active fan.  I even found virtue in their 1998 clunker No Substance and managed to fully ignore the shitty nature of the follow up, 2000's The New America.  I just pretended like The New America didn't exist. 

They were the best band in the world to me, and I didn't care what anybody said.

These days, though, the Interhole has taught us all to get bored with things very quickly and to be hyper critical of things that we like.  Have you ever heard the old phrase "I liked their old stuff," or "Their demo was better,"?  I'm sure that, like me, you've said those things a million times, but never before have those phrases been so beaten to death by media and the Kvlter-Than-Thou among us than today.  I hear it all the time when I talk to my br00tal br0z.  It goes like this:

Me: "Have you heard the new [band that is frightening to common folks] album?"

Bro: "Yeah.  It was really boring.  I like their older stuff, but this one just didn't stick with me.  I'm really into [more obscure band with a weird gimmick/dumb name/guitar player from a different obscure band with these qualities].  You should really hear it.  It's so good."

Me: "I like to be in the loop with obscurity.  Hit me with it."

[We listen to a recording that sounds like it was recorded by me when I was in high school, on four-track audio cassette recording rig with one room mic]

Me: "I have no idea what that was."

Bro: "It's so good.  Did you hear that riff?"

Me: "No."

And so forth.

Invariably, after about a week, my major bro has moved on to the next thing that he's into, having expended as much energy as he's capable of listening to some obscure band whose riffs you can't hear because of the Neanderthal recording.  Poor technical skills also contribute to this, but I'm on a tangent here.

What I'm really trying to ask: "Is there anybody who likes a band to such an extent that they will purchase everything by that band without having listened to it prior?"

Where have all the diehards gone?

I still fancy myself to be something of a diehard fan of certain bands that exist.  I own everything by Trap Them, most of it bought directly from Brian Izzi at their merch booth at either Emo's or Red 7 here in Austin.  I have 5 (!) CD's, legally purchased, having listened to none of them prior to purchase, and have bought 5 shirts, a sweet trucker hat, and a Seizures in Barren Praise poster that I forced all of the band members to sign.  None of their albums/EP's are boring to me, and they're all amazing in their own way.  I purchase every Intronaut album at a record store the day that they release (this started around the time of The Challenger), and it's only through sheer bad luck and poor timing on my part that I missed the last two times they came through my area.  The same goes with Protest the Hero, whose albums I buy the day they come out without listening to the leaks first because I know that I'm going to get gay all over them.

And there are a few others who are building themselves up to be this way for me, too, including Anaal Nathrakh, Black Breath, Rotten Sound, and GridLink.

What I want to know is, what kind of music are you a diehard fan of?  I am dying to know if anybody out there still has a stable of bands that every album tickles their metalbone on the underside--where it's most sensitive--every time?  I feel that there's a sore lack of that kind of fanhood these days, especially when it's popular and expected that everyone be hypercritical of everything that comes their way.

I don't mean to demean everybody and look down on the way they listen to music.  I mean, everybody but me does it wrong, that's a given and a scientifically proven fact, but I'm not saying that I'm better than you.  I mean, I am, but...

I don't know how to finish that sentence.

Somebody tell me that they have those bands still, too.  Do it in the comments.

Scoop 'Em All

I scooped them.

Here's mine (posted April 28).

Here's Invisible Oranges' (Posted May 17).

Here's MTVKorea's (Posted May 17).

Though I get no mention and had nothing to do with Pat Lukens blowing up, I take solace in the fact that I scooped 'em all because I obsessively check my email and have nothing better to do.  But I still rule.

Suck it, MTVKorea.

Gloating accomplished; posting resumes tomorrow.

Anaal Nathrakh--Passion

I love album preorders.  I'm one of the cavemen that still buys physical media from bands, particularly CD's, because I can play them in my car and rip them onto my iPod, and it gives me the satisfaction of not having stolen a piece of music that I really wanted and will enjoy forever, until I'm some old creeper in a sleeveless Kill the Client T-shirt and my grandchildren think that my taste in music is antiquated and gay.  "But why do you like album preorders?" you are probably asking.  "Can't you leave your stupid apartment from time to time and go to a record shop and buy something like a human might do?"  The answer is, of course, no.  The internet is a vastly superior means for obtaining everything meaningful except wardrobe, which I do exclusively at shows.  But are you looking for venison jerky, organic milk, a cell phone, and a bulk pack of off-brand irregular underwear?  Internets to the rescue!

But the slightly shorter answer to your question is that I love album preorders because labels have apparently gotten kind of haphazard with how they distribute the music.  You see, my numerous drunken emails to people who might work at various record labels were all apparently ignored.  I haven't been issued my press credentials and am forced back into the bushes to breathe heavily and write unsettling emails to my favorite bands demanding things.

But online preorders have become more slipshod in their distribution of albums.  I preorder albums without even throwing my weight around as a boner joke enthusiast and amateur writer with a dumb website, and they show up in my mailbox weeks earlier than the release date.  It's awesome.  This happened in March with my Trap Them preorder (read about Darker Handcraft here), which arrived a full fifteen days prior to the release date, allowing me plenty of time to slap my wang around while listening to it and feeling all superior to everybody else (except, of course, those who found the leak online and just stole the fucking album before I even got it).  Since I thrive on my unwarranted feelings of superiority and self-righteousness, this is a big deal.  And it just happened with Passion, Anaal Nathrakh's latest album and my new favorite thing in the world.

Like so many albums before it, I have spent much of my commute to work listening to the album, just walking around and getting a feel for it.  I listened to it while I walked to the train this past Thursday, while the rain fell in a torrential downpour that soaked me all the way to the bone despite the totally lame umbrella I had unearthed from my coat closet.  It did nothing to protect me!  But I guess that's what I get for using a Hello Kitty umbrella instead of something designed for an adult male with twenty pounds too many clinging to his stretch mark covered frame.

Also, an umbrella that would have accommodated my hangover would have been helpful.

For most people, listening to an Anaal Nathrakh album is like trying to find a suitable mate at a Star Trek convention; it doesn't sound like something they'd like to do, and as soon as it begins, they immediately regret their participation.  It's a veritable futile endeavor.  Not me, though; I'm like the loose girl at the Star Trek convention.  She looks at the ocean of horny and available men as a veritable boner buffet.  It's almost...too easy.  An Anaal Nathrakh album is my Star Trek convention.  Most people would never consider music like this listenable, but to me it's an effortless boner feast.  Without even trying, I can plug my various fleshy holes so that my daddy will finally love me.

Passion is a step forward for Anaal Nathrakh, and sees the band take new risks while retaining the monumental sound and person-being-burned-at-the-stake intensity of their previous releases.  That the band takes the sound of Constellation and pushes it to the limits is impressive, particularly considering how ridiculously extreme they were to begin with.  But songs like "Tod Huetet Uebel" reveal new range to the vokills, with V.I.T.R.I.O.L. revealing that he's capable of doing vocals that don't sound like Japanese torture movies set to music.  The grandiose clean singing is also heavily prevalent, allowing the songs a dynamic range that runs the gamut from "ridiculously loud, aggressive, and fast" to "ridiculously loud, aggressive, and fast but with clean singing."  Standout tracks like "Ashes Screaming Silence" and "Drug Fucking Abomination" showcase the signature towering tone and colossal bite that so endeared me to Constellation.

Anaal Nathrakh have opened the doors to the killbot factory once again and deliver an amazing follow-up to my favorite album of  2009, In the Constellation of the Black Widow.  I've been rocking the album multiple times a day for the last week or so, and I can tell you that it's every bit the boner feast that I've described.  It's probably pretty easy to steal, but you should be a cool dude like me and buy it.  But either way, you should just be listening to the album.  If you're looking for an album that is going to automatically make your coworkers jump to the conclusion that you eat human skin fun, or that will make a Fedex driver insist that he pray for you right there and then, Passion is probably the best place to start.  Anecdotal evidence shows that those things will automatically happen when you listen to this necro slice of awesomeness.

Check out this interview on Invisible Oranges and listen to the music at the bottom.  You'll either be really sorry or...well, you'll probably just be sorry.  Or do the natural thing and steal it.  That's what Google is for.

Since You Didn't Ask Me--Dream Theater's Battle Royale

DT, with Portnoy, a few years ago before their group colonoscopy.

 

Prog has been on my mind lately, and since I railed about it yesterday, I decided to go ahead and give myself a happy ending by finally weighing in about the Dream Theater drummer search and all the lame old man drama surrounding the band because nobody has ever asked me to and nobody is clamoring for my opinion on the subject.  So here it is.

 

My love for Dream Theater runs deep and is unflinching, even in the face of my friends calling me a homo and stuff because I have every album of theirs uploaded onto my iPod, including the live ones.  I'm a stone cold prog nerd; I just recently found out that prog is a dead scene, because I called people to stand tall with me as a geek yesterday, and all three people who were actually going to read the article read it by now.  Turns out, my dad and the two other people who read this (one of whom I know hates Dream Theater) didn't surprise me.  I wasn't expecting anybody to, though, so about this I am unsurprised.  But this lame drama shouldn't have even happened.  And I'll tell you why.

 

The Interbung was all atwitter when Mike Portnoy left/got kicked out of Dream Theater a couple of months ago.  I, for one, was shocked and appalled by the announcement that he would leave/be kicked out of the group, but it's not because inter-band tensions are unimaginable and surprising.  I was surprised because Portnoy at the time had been spending so much time on the road with Avenged Sevenfold, a band about whose shittyness I am outspoken.  They suck.  Like, out loud.  If you're reading this, I'm almost certain that you agree.  Since so many of Avenged Sevenfold's fans are illiterate and spend most of their time rewatching Shrek the Third over and over again, it's powerfully improbable that they would ever find this article, and if they do, they would never be able to decode the siguls and heiroglyphs that you and I recognize as letters and words.

 

Anyway, Portnoy wanted some time off.  He was on the road for months with Avenged Sevenfold, watching them do blow off each others half-erect penises while they wear dumb hats and stuff.  I can see where that would wear a person out.  But the rest of the dudes from Dream Theater were all like "Naw, bro.  We need to get this new record done and hit the road ourselves.  These Nissan Sentras don't pay for themselves, dude."  They gesture at their "rock mobiles," three 2004 Nissan Sentras with matching license plate frames that say "DT THUGZ LIFE" on them.  And Mike Portnoy is like "Please?" and the reply comes, "Eat a penis, Mike, you're out of the band!"

 

"You can't fire me!  I QUIT!" screamed Portnoy, tears welling up in his eyes.

"Get out of here before I BEAT YOU UP," shouted John Petrucci, his voice quivering with emotion.

 

Portnoy runs away, hands flailing about in the air, a series of powerless whimpers escaping his lips.  He runs several blocks away and collapsed behind a dumpster in a 7-11 parking lot.  The sobs overcome him; he cries for hours.  Little does he know that his former bandmates have spent their afternoon in the exact same way, weeping and embracing each other and lamenting the harsh words that were just exchanged.

Or maybe none of that happened.

Anyway, here's my beef.  Portnoy shouldn't have been spending all of his time with Avenged Sevenfold.  They can easily find some swoop-haircutted wang to leave his mother's basement and stay on the road forever.  They shouldn't have even needed Portnoy on the road, and he shouldn't have been wasting his time enabling Avenged Sevenfold to keep assaulting the nation's youth with inferior music and stupid fashion choices.  But maybe the dudes from Dream Theater should have chilled out a little bit.  I mean, that "eat a penis" remark was a little uncalled for, and the rest of the exchange seemed petty and bitter, as if the rest of Dream Theater just felt that Portnoy had misplaced his priorities in spending so long with another band, especially one whose inferior quality could be read as an affront to the prog community.

Just sayin'.

But the biggest question looms: Can Dream Theater make a good album without Portnoy behind the skins?  Most of you just said "They can't make a good album WITH Portnoy," and I understand that it's your right as an American to be wrong.  I love that your inane opinion can be shouted at your computer screen, and I respect freedom of speech even for you, the inferior human who doesn't like Dream Theater.  But shut up now; it's time for the grown ups to talk.

I would make the argument that I have no idea what Portnoy usually does in the studio, but I can say with near certainty that he doesn't write very many guitar riffs or keyboard solos, and I would also argue that if he's such a big potato at arranging and it hasn't rubbed off on the rest of the band, they need to just call it quits in general.  I mean, after 20+ years in a band, if only one member has any idea how to construct a song, they should maybe look into furthering their education at the community college with all the other dum-dums and ne'er-do-wells who didn't take a hard run at high school.  They need to get their brains working again.

Dream Theater's new drummer is Mike Mangini, a very talented and accomplished drummer who has done a ton of amazing things, none of which I have ever heard or even remotely care about.  His discography is packed with recordings that I'll never, ever listen to with notable artists that none of us have even the most superficial interest in.  It'll be...fine, I guess?  The band will be totally fine, and Mike Portnoy will eventually rejoin the band and things will go back to normal for me, with Dream Theater singing songs about somebody's dead dad being his best friend and stuff.  Totally awesome.

Time will certainly tell with Dream Theater's new album that's in the works.  It's impossible to say what they'll do other than put out another release that sounds exactly like they've always sounded.  But on the flipside, we all know that bands shit the bed all the time, often without even losing any members, so we'll have to wait with bated breath and puffy shirts tucked into leather pants to see if any bed shitting occurs. 

Since you didn't ask and don't care.