Dream Theater is a band that has always struggled with the media and its listeners (fans and haters), some say the band is too heavy to be considered progressive, others consider them to prog to be metal, and so they’ve always been in between.

Aside from the ever watching eye of everyone who listens to them, the boys from DT have always had the tendency to release a great album followed by a weaker one. The band reached its creative pinnacle with 1999’s “Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory”, an album they followed with the bloated “Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence”, an album very hard to swallow (even by Dream Theater standards).

After that album, the band released the unstoppable monster “Train of Thought”, considered the band’s heaviest album. Then came the mind numbing “Octavarium”, which, for lack of a better word, was boring. Now the band brings us their latest effort “Systematic Chaos”; the result is miles away from “Octavarium”, as the band returns to a more aggressive style that is very reminiscent of 1994’s “Awake”.

It has some hard hitting riffs and ear popping solos from John Petrucci. It’s also peppered with the maniacal drumming of Mike Portnoy, and the great bass and keyword parts that have always been present in the band’s entire catalog. Also, vocalist James LaBrie gives one great performance after another, as usual. So you might be wondering why the low rating? Well, the answer lies with the “prog side” of things. The band has always experimented with all kinds of musical influences, but this time they didn’t quite achieve the effect they did in the past. The first half of the album is Dream Theater at its best, “In the Presence of Enemies Pt. 1”, “Constant Motion” and “The Dark Eternal Night” are some of the heaviest, yet layered songs this band has ever written. At some point of another they move from heavy riffs to virtuoso playing to gut wrenching melodies and give the listener a great rush. But halfway into the album, the band turns in the wrong direction.

“Repentance” (the fourth part in Mike Portnoy’s Alcoholics Anonymous suite) has a great start with a very ominous parts looming here and there, and a fantastic spoken section, but the song never takes off and becomes very repetitive. From that point on, the rest of the album is very weird, with some great riffs and melodies, but the more progressive sections go in a completely different direction and really bring down the more positive elements of the songs; something that didn’t happen in the past.

“Systematic Chaos” is an album that will certainly create a lot of debate between DT fans and critics, but the one true fact about this album is that there is something for anyone who’s heard this band.