Featured Band : Dream Theater Black Clouds & Silver Linings

One doesn't so much listen to Dream Theater as get overrun by them, and ten studio albums in, the band are still pursuing their uber-muscular progressive metal agenda with ruthless dedication.

Their undoubted collective instrumental firepower is deployed like a bunch of marauding marines with anger management issues, slipping the leash and swarming over everything in their path.

To get anywhere near that you have to go through four tracks of bombast-heavy bashing before you arrive at The Best Of Times. Even then it's only a matter of minutes (2' 55'' to be precise) before the listener is blasted back into the high-octane cut and thrust of it all.

True, John Petrucci's souped-up athletic guitar runs are amongst the quickest things you're ever likely to hear.

However one person's thrash is another's idea of brash and whilst it's easy to understand the exhilarating sense of momentum such advanced technique affords the group, it's unrelenting nature quickly palls to all but the faithful. Sometimes it's not what you’ve got that counts but how you use it.