I Listened to Raw Dog Again

[Adami]

To me it's better than Ytse Jam...and well..no question about it being better than Eve...pfft

I know english isn't your primary language, but I think your post is expressing the opposite of the truth. You might want to fix that so people don't assume you meant that Raw Dog is better than either Ytse Jam or Eve.

[BRGM]

.... -.^

[Jamesman42]

Oh my.

[Seventh Son]

To me it's better than Ytse Jam...and well..no question about it being better than Eve...pfft

I almost raged. Almost.

[BRGM]

I'm good at making ppl at the DT forum rage by apprecieating DTs music...Where's our world heading?! :O

[Arcaeus]

To me it's better than Ytse Jam...and well..no question about it being better than Eve...pfft

[BRGM]

Hehehehe

   but Hell's kitchen might be better though, and SoC aswell...but The Dance will allways be the best, THE best instrumental!







Erotomania i somewhere down here with Eve.

[j]

To me it's better than Ytse Jam...and well..no question about it being better than Eve...pfft

Certainly not the WORST of your many terrible opinions, but I still disagree, even though I don't really care for Ytse Jam.

-J

[ScioPath]

My opinion of Raw Dog has improved after a few listens. Still among my least favs.

[Jamesman42]

Oh why not. Let's rank the instrumentals to include Raw Dog.

Hell's Kitchen
Bombay Vindaloo (don't care what you say, I am counting it)
Eve
Stream of Consciousness
Erotomania
Overture 1928
The Dance of Eternity
Raw Dog
Ytse Jam

[Seventh Son]

Hehehehe

   but Hell's kitchen might be better though, and SoC aswell...but The Dance will allways be the best, THE best instrumental!







Erotomania i somewhere down here with Eve.

DoE is probably their weakest instrumental aside from Raw Dog.

[ScioPath]

The Dance of Eternity is an amazing song TECHNICALLY.

That's about all it is. (although ill admit i wish i could play it on keys. i can only do it up until the Fatal Tragedy arpeggios)

[ariich]

My ranking is very close to yours James, with a couple of changes:

Hell's Kitchen
Eve
Stream of Consciousness
Erotomania
Overture 1928
Raw Dog
Ytse Jam
The Dance of Eternity

I'd put TDoE at the bottom, and I refuse to include Bombay Vindaloo on the basis that it's a jam session and not a song, and so the only list it should ever appear in is top of the list of tracks that shouldn't be included in other DT-related lists.

[Jamesman42]

I'd put TDoE at the bottom, and I refuse to include Bombay Vindaloo on the basis that it's a jam session and not a song, and so the only list it should ever appear in is top of the list of tracks that shouldn't be included in other DT-related lists.

I will defeat you yet, ariich.

[BRGM]

THE DANCE!!!!
The streaaam!!!
Kitchen of heeelll!!!
Raw dog
Overture 1928
Do we count the Sdoit overture? if so, it's here < < <
That jam on the marquee, bombay vindaloo or w/e it's called
Ytse Jam
Erotomania
Eve
That's all right?

[Dream Team]

To me it's better than Ytse Jam...and well..no question about it being better than Eve...pfft

I know english isn't your primary language, but I think your post is expressing the opposite of the truth. You might want to fix that so people don't assume you meant that Raw Dog is better than either Ytse Jam or Eve.

The guy's been trolling for months now, the language barrier isn't the issue.

[AwakeFromOctavarium]

He's gotten much better, I tell you. And I don't think he's trolling on purpose, so you can't really call that trolling.

[ScioPath]

Hell's Kitchen:

I love this every once in a while. One of the DT songs that (IMO) actually has feeling. And JP still manages to fit in a mind melting solo. A top-ten song for me

Eve:

Not a song that you can really 'groove' to, but I love it. Idk why it's not on an album but it shoul be.

Overture 1928:

Very good as an instrumental. Brings back Metropolis's intro, which flows nicely from Regression. Fascinating musically. Also hosts some of DT's better solos. Transition to Strange Deja Vu is nothing short of godly.

Erotomania:

Good song. I hated it at first I will admit. Largely due to the organ in the beginning and the hard-to-decipher time sigs. I now see the latter as an asset.

Overture SDOIT:

Certainly a musical accomplishment, but as a single piece is nothing special. Works very well as a part in SDOIT

SoC:

Not too crazy about this one. Great instrumentation all across the board, however it drags a lot in the last two or three minutes.

TDoE:

Very annoying after seven minutes, but somehow I feel SFAM would be incomplete without it. Jordan did some awesome things in this, like the ragtime solo. The 'most time sig changes in a single song' seems more of a label than anything.

Ytse Jam:

Very catchy lick; but I fail to see the song as much more than that. A high point on the album.

Raw Dog: meh. no.

[BRGM]

He's gotten much better, I tell you. And I don't think he's trolling on purpose, so you can't really call that trolling.

WHAT'S TROLLING?!?!?! How can I be something that I do not even know what it means!!!

[orcus116]

He's gotten much better, I tell you. And I don't think he's trolling on purpose, so you can't really call that trolling.

I'll give him the benefit of the doubt but it really does look like something a bored 5/8er or similar would do "for lulz".

[TAC]

BRMG isn't trolling. Just the other day he made this very astute post:

I agree with TAC

[AwakeFromOctavarium]

BRMG isn't trolling. Just the other day he made this very astute post:

I agree with TAC

And you spelled his four-letter-username wrong.

[ScioPath]

He's gotten much better, I tell you. And I don't think he's trolling on purpose, so you can't really call that trolling.

WHAT'S TROLLING?!?!?! How can I be something that I do not even know what it means!!!

Trolling is purposely pissing people off to get a response from them. You are not a troll; your opinions are genuine.

[KevShmev]

Yep, having really bad opinions does not make you a troll.

Anyway, as far as the instrumentals go, "Erotomania" and "Hell's Kitchen" are the best two, and "Raw Dog" and "The Dance of Eternity" are the worst two.  Everything else fits in the middle somewhere.

[orcus116]

Yep, having really bad opinions does not make you a troll.

Very true, though some of his earlier opinions (pretty much all of them) were getting rises out of people without fail. That plus his order of DT albums from least favorite to favorite was in exact release order which was kinda suspicious. He seems genuine at this point, though.

[TAC]

BRMG isn't trolling. Just the other day he made this very astute post:

I agree with TAC

And you spelled his four-letter-username wrong.

Thanks for pointing that out OctaFromAwakeavarium!

[orcus116]

You're such a jokester, CAT.

[TAC]

You're such a jokester, CAT.

As I was typing my post, I KNEW that was coming.

[The Letter M]

You're such a jokester, CAT.

As I was typing my post, I KNEW that was coming.

You are quite the ACT.

-Marc.

[Jamesman42]

You're such a jokester, CAT.

As I was typing my post, I KNEW that was coming.

You are quite the ACT.

-Marc.

Marc, how do you craM such wit into your posts?

[Dublagent66]

I listened to it for the first time yesterday on youtube and it definitely sounds like a video game track.  I wouldn't be inclined even in the least to compare it to album instrumentals.  Not even the same thing.  It's a fucking video game people.  Bands don't take video game tracks that seriously.  They have a theme to work with and throw some stuff together related to the theme and that's it.  I can guarantee if there is an instrumental on the next album, it will be better than Raw Dog.

[The Letter M]

I listened to it for the first time yesterday on youtube and it definitely sounds like a video game track.  I wouldn't be inclined even in the least to compare it to album instrumentals.  Not even the same thing.  It's a fucking video game people.  Bands don't take video game tracks that seriously.  They have a theme to work with and throw some stuff together related to the theme and that's it.  I can guarantee if there is an instrumental on the next album, it will be better than Raw Dog.

...Unless you're Incubus, who cranked out a 20+ minute instrumental, 4-part suite in the vein of progressive rock with Floydian-influence and a bit of Crimson thrown in...

-Marc.

[Dublagent66]

That's probably a rare occasion.  I was speaking in general terms of course.

[BRGM]

Yep, having really bad opinions does not make you a troll.

They're not bad, just different than yours...and like all the others as well.

[ReaPsTA]

I never got the 'Raw Dog feels like a bunch of riffs slapped together' argument. I guess compositionally it kinda is, considering how abrupt the transitions are, but the emotional through-lines are all still there.

Intro, goes on for a while, you feel like it's time to stop introing and get to rocking

Kick into the riff with the strings and lead guitar, which kinda rocks, this doesn't build up too radically, so you can't transition into something too different

Guitar lead and bassline with a similar feel to the melody before it kick in, we stay with this for a while, because of this your next transition has to be far more different feeling, and the transition implies as much

Very intense feeling lead guitar then lead keyboard line to transition into solos, starting with a more melodic guitar solo for contrast
Riffs underlying the solos get slightly darker over the course of the section, solos get increasingly more twisted, ending with a weird but farmoreeffectivethaninariteofpassage Bebot solo that ends with a weirdly majestic feeling resolve which kicks us into

The big melodic and epic unison section, which brings together all the emotional intensity of the solos and keeps building it as the drums get faster, and then doesn't quite resolve that tension and instead lets it bleed out by going to the darker keyboard arpeggio type section, at that point, you want to hear something that isn't so crazy

So BAM, back to the riff the song started with, which kicks into a double bass driven descent into the end of the song. Oddly, this is the part of the song I find myself most emotionally responding to but don't really know how to explain. I always think of it as armies marching into some kind of inevitable and hopeless battle with one another, but I don't really know how that works in the context of the song. It's a shame they didn't stick a fadeout onto the end. That would have been a great ending.

Inevitably, someone will say "well, if you overthink something enough, of course it will make sense." But I can remember the first time I heard it quite distinctly, and I followed all the transitions and got basically the same feeling from them that I do now. More elaborately? Yes, which always happens when you get more familiar with a song. But I didn't teach myself to like it for god knows what reason. There are many, many DT songs that feel more like riffs thrown together than this one.

Also, generic metal? Really? How generic is the bassline before the big solo section? How obviously are the solos Petrucci and Rudess? The unison after the solos is such a distinct DT trope. The keyboard breakdown after the unison is so obviously Rudess. The outro is unlike anything I've heard before. Maybe the intro's generic (it's the same riff as the outro, but instead of going into the rolling double bass Petrucci fills in the notes with muted notes), but it's still cool sounding and works in the context of the song, even though admittedly it's my least favorite part.

Or maybe I'm just hearing it all wrong.