Band:	Liquid Tension Experiment
Album:	Liquid Tension Experiment 3
Style:	Instrumental, Progressive metal
Release date:	April 16, 2021
A review by:	RaduP

Disc I
01. Hypersonic
02. Beating The Odds
03. Liquid Evolution
04. The Passage Of Time
05. Chris & Kevin's Amazing Odyssey
06. Rhapsody In Blue
07. Shades Of Hope
08. Key To The Imagination

Disc II [limited edition bonus]
01. Blink Of An Eye
02. Solid Resolution Theory
03. View From The Mountaintop
04. Your Beard Is Good
05. Ya Mon

Ladies and gentlemen, I am baffled!

To explain what I mean by that I have talk about my relationship with Dream Theater. I... respect Dream Theater. And sometimes I even willingly listen to their music. I think there's a lot to appreciate in their musicianship and songwriting, but it just never properly appealed to me. I left halfway through a Dream Theater concert because I was tired, and I can't for the life of me imagine someone willingly listening to The Astonishing for a second time. And as much as I like to put flak on LaBrie, he's actually a fairly good singer, even if he is clearly the weak link in the bunch. And that said, even with my relative distance from Dream Theater, I know just how fiery their fanbase is.

So, knowing that, I expected a lot more fuss about this album. Liquid Tension Experiment aka all the good things from Dream Theater minus all the weak links from Dream Theater and with Myung replaced by King Crimson's Tony Levin reuniting after more than two decades? And also I can't imagine the Dream Theater fanbase not being on their heels about Portnoy working with Petrucci once again. And the fact that I had the expectation of how big the reception for this album was gonna be, and the fact that me, someone with no emotional connection to Dream Theater is the one to review it, should probably tell you that nobody else behind the scenes really wanted to touch this.

Hence why I am baffled. But here I am, trying my best to make sense of it. And the best explanation that I can come up with is that it too damn long. With a nearly two hours runtime, even I feel that it is quite a daunting task to register all of it. And sure, that's because it's a deluxe edition and a huge chunk of that is from the second CD, which is a bonus. But that's still all new material, and guess what? I'd argue that the second CD is even better than the first, since it feels a lot more improvised and spontaneous, so there's no way around it. The fellas made up for their decades long absence and subpar offshoots as Liquid Trio Experiment with a massive double album. So if someone can sit down and take two hours of The Astonishing but not two hours of LTE3, is there any other explanation other than masochism?

Well, I have no idea, but I can guess that is because Liquid Tension Experiment still sounds a lot like Dream Theater, like you could arrange a huge chunk of it to fit on their music in some way, even if the bass playing is pretty distinct. So without LaBrie's voice as a sort of anchor, the music on LTE3 is a bit harder to latch onto, and it can feel a bit meandering. But... so does Dream Theater's music even with LaBrie's vocals. I mean, there is no point during this album's runtime where I felt like the album had no idea what it wants to do. The ebb and flow keeps that sense of playful complexity even with a slightly more improvisational feel, and even if it feels like Dream Theater, it feels like Dream Theater's best moments. You won't find anything close to whatever "Wither" is here.

In a way this is less of a metal album, being more similar to the first LTE album rather than the relatively heavier LTE2, and thus a lot of the album feels more melodic and somewhat jazz fusion inspired. There is a lot of "wankery" here, but I can't expect anyone going into such a record, especially an instrumental one like this and not expecting that. Could you imagine how this would sound like without any of it? These are still some world class virtuosos, and even if their technical proficiency exceeds their songwriting abilities, it's not like they don't know when to push and when to pull.

And with how much fun I had with the record despite its length and lack of an anchor, I doubt I'll ever be this excited about anything in the Dream Theater camp anytime soon.