Roughly contemporaneous albums that I acquired during my first two years of high school

It's like Dennis DeYoung fronting Rush except like a decade and a half after the peak of either former band.

Honestly just fast forward to Metropolis already

Dudes have chops, I'll give them that. But what is the value of chops when employed in the service of evil.

The only Dream Theater I ever want to hear again is the first minute of 'The Mirror'

Man, for better or worse, I'm sticking this out, every brutal track. And clearly not actually doing the work I alluded to earlier.

Oh cool, they got Enya to do a little guest keyboardin' on 'Surrounded'. Quite a coup!

Angel Dust & Check Your Head tie this one, AD wins in terms of hours listened

This is like if Savage Garden was an ELP cover band.

Sorry, I'm destroying my own thread.

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It's just that compared to when I first heard this, I've developed a much broader array of ways to say 'this is bad'.

The absolute worst thing about working for Roadrunner Records for three years was having to go to a Dream Theater show. This despite the fact that all the members were incredibly nice dudes ("a band full of dads" is an incredibly apt description - they are some minivan-driving motherfuckers who happen to be incredibly skilled musicians).

Check Your Head is an easy pick for me. The Beastie Boys had such a huge impact on my youth and teen years.

I'm on to 'Metropolis' now. Trying to remember which Genesis game this was the soundtrack to. Comix Zone, maybe?

In this theater, we present the dreams you have when you chow down on a burrito too close to bedtime.

Okay, I was being mildly snarky (or a lot snarky) by suggesting this was sourced for a Genesis soundtrack, but 47 minutes into 'Metropolis' I feel very much like I'm in the midst of a 16-bit boss battle.

If Mr. Bungle had been fronted by Geoff Tate instead of Mike Patton, that band would be Dream Theater.

Check Your Head is an easy pick for me. The Beastie Boys had such a huge impact on my youth and teen years.

This is something I missed by just a few years. I liked "Fight for Your Right (to Party)", but never heard Licensed to Ill front to back at the time; *loved* Paul's Boutique, but had lost interest by the time Check Your Head came out, and nothing they ever did post-PB really did it for me. That one album was so wild and brilliant, everything afterward fell short. And the idea of going to see them live held no interest for me at all. My little brother saw them around that time, though, with (I think) Cypress Hill and Da Lench Mob.

Paul's Boutique had passed me by completely, somehow. The first time I heard 'Pass the Mic' was a head-turning 'whoa, so that's what those dudes sound like now?' moment.

Check Your Head was the one for me, since I was so into playing drums and funk and the live instrument version of everything (hip hop, drum & bass, etc). Still think it's their best sounding recording.

Back to Dream Theater: so like I geddit if people were into these dudes in order to get a hit of the wanky progginess that was otherwise kinda out of fashion at the time, but then how did they justify the thing where every other track is just like the lead singer indulging his inner John Tesh over twinkly new age synths for four minutes?

All right, I honestly don't know how much more of this I can take.

Officially, I can now say that Images and Words will not be receiving my vote in this poll.

This is like being under local anesthetic and watching with foggy wonder as someone disassembles your body. Like you know this is the worst thing that could possibly happen but...you just can't look away.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck that last track was interfuckingminable. I think I'm going to put on Metal Machine Music and scour my brain clean for a little while.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

dang this list whiffs on all the records from that era/radio format that i have any fondness for

Shakespears