Today's Listen

Dream Theater - Systematic Chaos (2009)

This is the band's ninth studio album, and it continues their streak of highly complex progressive metal. Often seen as one of their weaker albums to date, I could not help but agree for a long time. Today, however, I decided to throw on this album while I was working out in my basement and it sounded fantastic. It's definitely an underrated performance for these truly fantastic musicians, and I feel stupid for overlooking it for so long. The album contains some of the band's most technical compositions, and would be an extremely difficult listen for anyone new to metal. Drummer Mike Portnoy gives an all-star performance as usual, and delivers one of his most insane rhythms on "Constant Motion." The albums epic "In the Presence of Enemies" is split into two parts, and it demonstrates the band's ability to make metal as progressive as possible. "The Dark Eternal Night" is a nice showcase of the band flexing their muscles of technical musicianship. This album should be a great listen to any fan of heavy metal.