I still stand firmly by my take that A Dramatic Turn of Events and Distance Over Time are some of Dream Theater's best stuff. As a drummer growing up with the Mangini era, both him and Portnoy had such a huge influence on my playing, and I still take so many cues from them to this day.
One thing I'd like to point out to people who get mad at mangini for not bringing much to the songwriting is that for most of the albums, he literally wasnt involved in the songwriting right up until the end for the most part. So, i mean, what could you possibly expect him to do at that point besides making sure that his drum parts are absolutely stellar (which they are). And for the last two albums, when he was involved in the writing process, the albums turned out to be much better than a lot of the previous ones. In particular, Distance over Time was awesome and the solo sections for AVFTTOTW were super fluid and the drums felt amazing with all the different accents he put in in all sorts of weird and interesting places
Dramatic Turn of Events and A View From The Top of The World are easily the best albums he’s done with Dream Theater, my favorite of the two being View.
DT got very monotonous after Portnoy left, or maybe one or two albums beforehand. I tried listening to their last album and found it pretty boring, but at least the mix was really good. Let's see what happens with Portnoy back in the kit.
Distance over Time was my favorite Mangini album. I enjoyed his drumming and would guess he contributed the most. One of my favorites of the DT catalog. Fan since 1993.
ADTOE is my favorite DT album. Maybe its not the most innovative, but the songs found on here are insane! Also AVFTTOTW has some of Manginis best and most technical drumming, far from serviceable...
I personally really enjoyed the Mangini albums granted some more than others but for what they were I liked those albums. I guess what probably was a factor was Mangini was in the band when I got into DT just before A Dramatic Turn came out.
I do enjoy how you analyse the music though especially in what your opinion is of them. It's interesting to know how other fans perceive different albums.
DOT will always be special to me because that’s how I discovered DT .It will be tough for new fans to go through a 10+ mins song for the 1st time. So my theory is that it’s written in a way to match the mainstream music and bands with shorter length songs and memorable singing parts. Once new fans realise how good the band is they will start exploring the whole DT albums.Just my thought.
The live album from the ADTOE tour was called Live From Luna Park, and no matter your opinion of Mangini-era DT, is utterly fully sick (they play EVERY song from that album, and good choices of the classic shit like Dark Eternal Night, 6:00 and an acoustic Silent Man) and is literally their longest album. Funny fact, the DVD got delayed until after the release of the self-titled album, so their release history has two live releases back-to-back (Luna Park and Breaking The Forth Wall). You just know Petrucci killed some people over that blunder.
One of the reasons why ADTOE is the best for Magini along with AVFTTOTW is not only the drumming but the production. ADTOE drumming production is very 'raw' and unprocessed, as opposed to the rest of the albums that have me questioning if the snare drum is even real. Only downside to the production on ADTOE is the drums are slightly buried in the mix.
You nailed it. The drum tones on ADTOE was perfect but too low in the mix. I wish all the albums were recorded like that. Mike used that sampled sounding snare in his solos stuff too. That's where he and I veer. I'm not letting any samples touch my stuff!
The Astonishing over the years may become a Tales from Topographic album. Not really liked at first, pretty divisive but aged to become a classic. I may be wrong because its still too new.
Mangini on Mullmuzzler w/ JLB was my introduction to the sound of Mangini with someone from DT. That was in 2002. Ever since then I wanted to hear Mangini with DT. I was not disappointed. All of the albums he's on are my favorite from the entire catalog. I've been listening since 1992! Images and Words, and Awake were the only other DT albums I was was introduced to. I was not a Portnoy fan until recently. Once I heard Gene Hoglan in the summer of 1994 (Death - Individual Thought Patterns), I forgot about Portnoy to be honest. Sad to see them let Mangini go. He was the best thing that ever happened to them musically. He's limitless.
I was a fan of both Dramatic Turn of Events and A View From The Top of the World. The others I could give or take, with the exception of The Astonishing. That one, I'd pay someone to take it far away from me. Distance over Time really was the forgettable one for me. When it comes to Mangini's albums, I'd rate them in the following order: * Dramatic Turn of Events * A View From the top of the World * Dream Theater * Distance Over Time * The Astonishing I did get to see Mangini in the Dramatic Tour, and that was amazing. I was extremely sad to see them let him go. But honestly, I'm now excited to see what they do with Portnoy again.
Its funny, I would say exactly the same things about his era in Dream Theater. When ADTOE came out I was hesitant at first but this record really grew on me over time and I like it very much now. As for all the other ones, I can barely remember outstanding drumming parts with some exceptions (which you mentioned). With that said, I am glad that Portnoy is back and I am pretty excited for the new record that comes :)
Dude you're so wrong from a drummers perspective.! AVFTTOTW has the most incredible drumming of all Mangini's albulms . Awaken the Master is sick His best track is the Alien Monster drumming there and his drums sound best on this album
One thing that made DT a worse live band, besides LaBrie's decreasingly deteriorating voice, with Mangini isn't his 'robotic-ness'. It's that they started playing to a click track and also started using backing tracks. Sucks the whole soul out of the performance in my opinion. With Portnoy the music was truly alive. Sure the tempo shifted a bit from the studio versions, but that's the beautiful thing - they had to LISTEN and RESPOND to each other and THAT brought a nerve and tension to the performance. Portnoy has such a love for music and makes it playful and fun. I really, really hope they start to play the way they used to now that Portnoy is back.
I do agree with a lot of your gripes with this band. I haven’t bought the last two albums because I don’t like their direction. It is possible that they are out of ideas and they are recycling riffs; even on Black Clouds I notices recycling riffs. I hope that Portnoy brings back that missing piece in the band because Magini didn’t. I found Portnoy’s drumming much more enjoyable than Magini’s.-And Magini is actually A more advanced drummer than Portnoy. Anyways I am hoping for a good album that would restore my faith in DT
And Mangini had basically zero creative input on Dramatic Turn. The band had already written and demoed all the tracks with canned drums before they hired him, and he just simply played what they had written (put his own flourish on it, but he had no influence over the direction of the songs and his parts were pretty much set in stone). Making it all the more ironic that it's his best work with the band. One thing to mention, that you didn't, is that Distance Over Time's track "Paralyzed", Mangini actually presented the main guitar riff to the band. While he's not a guitarist himself, he does understand music theory and was able to put together a sort of synthesized/sampled guitar demo, which Petrucci cleaned up a bit to make easier to play, and yeah... it's kind of cool that his creativity isn't limited to just his own instrument. And you didn't mention his lyrics on "Room 137"! They're... not DT's best, but Petrucci's written "The Count of Tuscany", so at least he doesn't have DT's worst lyric!
@@mirkecWii worst is a matter of relativity. I didn't say it was bad. I just find the lyrics kind of corny. Generally, they don't write such corny lyrics. But you're right, it is a neat story in isolation. Matched to the music, it falls a little flat.
@@lauscho fair enough. My emotional connection with that song is too high to take any criticism lmao (it was my first DT song, saved me from depression and introduced me to prog)
@@mirkecWii I totally get that. I understand why someone might criticize The Glass Prison, but it was my first DT song and nothing can take that away from me 😛
For me, as a drummer, I think Distance Over Time and AVFTTOTW are definitely Mangini's best drumming with Dream Theater. he doesn't sound like a drum machine on these albums, he sounds a bit more loose. Dramatic Turn of Events is a great drum album, but its weird cuz he didn't write those drum parts lol. Definitely the self titled album and The Astonishing are his worst in terms of drumming.
I wonder if and how much material was written for a Dramatic Turn of Events before Portnoy left the band? Like maybe some was written while they were touring for Black Clouds? That might explain why the drumming was better on that album. I think a lot of the major key songs DT has done with Mangini are forgettable to be honest. I guess during the session hearings they did with drummers they should have done more soft slow songs and major key songs and Manginis weaknesses would have been more apparent. I thought Marco Minnemann was the better choice creatively. It will be interesting to hear if more of the back story ever comes out why about Mangini left and Portnoy came back.
According to interviews, for A Dramatic Turn of Events, the drum parts were written by Pettruci on a drum machine, and then Mangini used that as the basis to interpret those parts and do his own take on them.
To me honestly the last 5 albuns felt like a Petrucci/Rudess project that tried to sound like DT. Without Portnoy they didn't just lose one of the most influential members of the band, but the hability to work as a group. I absolute hate ADTOE (worst DT album in my opinion), self entitled sound generic, the last 2 felt more like a group effort, but are average at best and the one between those 4 is just plain boring. Nothing against Mangini, when he got the gig it was pretty clear they were looking for a drummer who could simply emulate Portnoy, not someone who would take part of the creative process. With Portnoy it feels like we're finally getting a new DT album after 15 years.
a dramatic turn of events had all the drum tracks written with a software program by petrucci. I don't see how it could be his best work since mangini basically played what petrucci wrote for him adding a little twist from time to time. ADTOE is definitely not the album that showcases mangini's abilities because the drum parts simply were not written by him
For me (overall): 1. A dramatic turn of events . . 2. A view from the top of the world 3. Distance over time 4. Self titled 5. Astonishing ADTOE is one of their best albums period, maybe not the most imaginative but the songs are killer, the production is very good, the riffs/jams/solos are amazing as always, the drumming is solid, breaking all illusions is probably my favorite song by them (also Johns best solo) Honestly the last two are switchable, only reason I put ST over astonishing is because of ebemy inside, enigma machine and illumination theory. The astonishing is just cringey idk, a few cool moments but way too long with way too little of interesting content. Drumming wise, AVFTTOTW (jesus christ) is the best BY FAR, closely followed by distance, the rest felt very bland, self titled had some cool drum parts but the tone was awful, the astonishing I honestly cant remember
Mangini can play Portnoy's drum parts no problem. I doubt Portnoy can play Mangini's parts. Mangini is technically on another level. Portnoy has the character and attitude though.
ADTOE was great album for DT & the best thing about it is mangini was NOT involved in writing, as JP was the one who did the programing for drums & then Mangini did it on actual! Manging is great drummer but his style not work with DT & he is boring as his eara in DT was the baddest albums in DT history! Glad Portnoy return back & hopefully he left up the energy again!
I still stand firmly by my take that A Dramatic Turn of Events and Distance Over Time are some of Dream Theater's best stuff. As a drummer growing up with the Mangini era, both him and Portnoy had such a huge influence on my playing, and I still take so many cues from them to this day.
I was just about to say exactly this. A Dramatic Turn of Events is one of my go to running albums.
Yes because they are less technical and more on the melodic side . Once you tame Jordan down things sound better
Honestly, Distance Over Time and A View From The Top Of The World were my favorite Mangini albums.
One thing I'd like to point out to people who get mad at mangini for not bringing much to the songwriting is that for most of the albums, he literally wasnt involved in the songwriting right up until the end for the most part. So, i mean, what could you possibly expect him to do at that point besides making sure that his drum parts are absolutely stellar (which they are). And for the last two albums, when he was involved in the writing process, the albums turned out to be much better than a lot of the previous ones. In particular, Distance over Time was awesome and the solo sections for AVFTTOTW were super fluid and the drums felt amazing with all the different accents he put in in all sorts of weird and interesting places
Distance over time was my favorite... SOOOOOO gooood.
I agree. I really like that album!
Dramatic Turn of Events and A View From The Top of The World are easily the best albums he’s done with Dream Theater, my favorite of the two being View.
SAME!
A Dramatic Turn of Events is for sure the best album Mangini made with them.
DT got very monotonous after Portnoy left, or maybe one or two albums beforehand. I tried listening to their last album and found it pretty boring, but at least the mix was really good. Let's see what happens with Portnoy back in the kit.
Distance over Time was my favorite Mangini album. I enjoyed his drumming and would guess he contributed the most. One of my favorites of the DT catalog. Fan since 1993.
ADTOE is my favorite DT album. Maybe its not the most innovative, but the songs found on here are insane! Also AVFTTOTW has some of Manginis best and most technical drumming, far from serviceable...
Mike Mangini's drumming in DT is musical and genius. Cheers to all the MP fan boys 🍻
I personally really enjoyed the Mangini albums granted some more than others but for what they were I liked those albums. I guess what probably was a factor was Mangini was in the band when I got into DT just before A Dramatic Turn came out.
I do enjoy how you analyse the music though especially in what your opinion is of them. It's interesting to know how other fans perceive different albums.
View from the top of the world is hands downs the best DT album they’ve ever created.
Is he gonna say it… Is he gonna say it…
6:25 Yes! A timekeeper! Always the biggest burn Notes can give to a drummer.
DOT will always be special to me because that’s how I discovered DT .It will be tough for new fans to go through a 10+ mins song for the 1st time.
So my theory is that it’s written in a way to match the mainstream music and bands with shorter length songs and memorable singing parts.
Once new fans realise how good the band is they will start exploring the whole DT albums.Just my thought.
The live album from the ADTOE tour was called Live From Luna Park, and no matter your opinion of Mangini-era DT, is utterly fully sick (they play EVERY song from that album, and good choices of the classic shit like Dark Eternal Night, 6:00 and an acoustic Silent Man) and is literally their longest album. Funny fact, the DVD got delayed until after the release of the self-titled album, so their release history has two live releases back-to-back (Luna Park and Breaking The Forth Wall). You just know Petrucci killed some people over that blunder.
The Astonishing is a fantastic album!!
One of the reasons why ADTOE is the best for Magini along with AVFTTOTW is not only the drumming but the production. ADTOE drumming production is very 'raw' and unprocessed, as opposed to the rest of the albums that have me questioning if the snare drum is even real. Only downside to the production on ADTOE is the drums are slightly buried in the mix.
You nailed it.
The drum tones on ADTOE was perfect but too low in the mix.
I wish all the albums were recorded like that.
Mike used that sampled sounding snare in his solos stuff too.
That's where he and I veer. I'm not letting any samples touch my stuff!
The Astonishing over the years may become a Tales from Topographic album. Not really liked at first, pretty divisive but aged to become a classic. I may be wrong because its still too new.
Mangini on Mullmuzzler w/ JLB was my introduction to the sound of Mangini with someone from DT.
That was in 2002.
Ever since then I wanted to hear Mangini with DT.
I was not disappointed.
All of the albums he's on are my favorite from the entire catalog. I've been listening since 1992!
Images and Words, and Awake were the only other DT albums I was was introduced to. I was not a Portnoy fan until recently. Once I heard Gene Hoglan in the summer of 1994 (Death - Individual Thought Patterns), I forgot about Portnoy to be honest.
Sad to see them let Mangini go. He was the best thing that ever happened to them musically. He's limitless.
A dramatic turn of events was great, but then after that I could only listen to the albums once before I was done and I still have no need to go back.
I felt the same. I liked parts of the Astonishing, but now I can't listen to it.
I was a fan of both Dramatic Turn of Events and A View From The Top of the World. The others I could give or take, with the exception of The Astonishing. That one, I'd pay someone to take it far away from me. Distance over Time really was the forgettable one for me. When it comes to Mangini's albums, I'd rate them in the following order:
* Dramatic Turn of Events
* A View From the top of the World
* Dream Theater
* Distance Over Time
* The Astonishing
I did get to see Mangini in the Dramatic Tour, and that was amazing. I was extremely sad to see them let him go. But honestly, I'm now excited to see what they do with Portnoy again.
You're crazy, the self titled is an amazing metal album
Its funny, I would say exactly the same things about his era in Dream Theater. When ADTOE came out I was hesitant at first but this record really grew on me over time and I like it very much now. As for all the other ones, I can barely remember outstanding drumming parts with some exceptions (which you mentioned). With that said, I am glad that Portnoy is back and I am pretty excited for the new record that comes :)
Dude you're so wrong from a drummers perspective.!
AVFTTOTW has the most incredible drumming of all Mangini's albulms .
Awaken the Master is sick
His best track is the Alien
Monster drumming there and his drums sound best on this album
One thing that made DT a worse live band, besides LaBrie's decreasingly deteriorating voice, with Mangini isn't his 'robotic-ness'. It's that they started playing to a click track and also started using backing tracks. Sucks the whole soul out of the performance in my opinion.
With Portnoy the music was truly alive. Sure the tempo shifted a bit from the studio versions, but that's the beautiful thing - they had to LISTEN and RESPOND to each other and THAT brought a nerve and tension to the performance. Portnoy has such a love for music and makes it playful and fun.
I really, really hope they start to play the way they used to now that Portnoy is back.
I do agree with a lot of your gripes with this band. I haven’t bought the last two albums because I don’t like their direction. It is possible that they are out of ideas and they are recycling riffs; even on Black Clouds I notices recycling riffs. I hope that Portnoy brings back that missing piece in the band because Magini didn’t. I found Portnoy’s drumming much more enjoyable than Magini’s.-And Magini is actually A more advanced drummer than Portnoy. Anyways I am hoping for a good album that would restore my faith in DT
And Mangini had basically zero creative input on Dramatic Turn. The band had already written and demoed all the tracks with canned drums before they hired him, and he just simply played what they had written (put his own flourish on it, but he had no influence over the direction of the songs and his parts were pretty much set in stone). Making it all the more ironic that it's his best work with the band.
One thing to mention, that you didn't, is that Distance Over Time's track "Paralyzed", Mangini actually presented the main guitar riff to the band. While he's not a guitarist himself, he does understand music theory and was able to put together a sort of synthesized/sampled guitar demo, which Petrucci cleaned up a bit to make easier to play, and yeah... it's kind of cool that his creativity isn't limited to just his own instrument. And you didn't mention his lyrics on "Room 137"! They're... not DT's best, but Petrucci's written "The Count of Tuscany", so at least he doesn't have DT's worst lyric!
Haha, for more than a decade I thought I was alone in disliking Count of Tuscany purely because of the lyrics.
The only lyric part I dislike with the count is Mikes growling parts, other than that it tells a story, idk whats bad about it
@@mirkecWii worst is a matter of relativity. I didn't say it was bad. I just find the lyrics kind of corny. Generally, they don't write such corny lyrics. But you're right, it is a neat story in isolation. Matched to the music, it falls a little flat.
@@lauscho fair enough. My emotional connection with that song is too high to take any criticism lmao (it was my first DT song, saved me from depression and introduced me to prog)
@@mirkecWii I totally get that. I understand why someone might criticize The Glass Prison, but it was my first DT song and nothing can take that away from me 😛
I hope we get a good one at last now that Portnoy is back
For me, as a drummer, I think Distance Over Time and AVFTTOTW are definitely Mangini's best drumming with Dream Theater. he doesn't sound like a drum machine on these albums, he sounds a bit more loose. Dramatic Turn of Events is a great drum album, but its weird cuz he didn't write those drum parts lol. Definitely the self titled album and The Astonishing are his worst in terms of drumming.
My tracking if Mike's albums as far as the entire brand performance goes 5 astonishing 4 dramatic 3 dt 2 distance 1 view
I wonder if and how much material was written for a Dramatic Turn of Events before Portnoy left the band? Like maybe some was written while they were touring for Black Clouds? That might explain why the drumming was better on that album. I think a lot of the major key songs DT has done with Mangini are forgettable to be honest. I guess during the session hearings they did with drummers they should have done more soft slow songs and major key songs and Manginis weaknesses would have been more apparent. I thought Marco Minnemann was the better choice creatively. It will be interesting to hear if more of the back story ever comes out why about Mangini left and Portnoy came back.
According to interviews, for A Dramatic Turn of Events, the drum parts were written by Pettruci on a drum machine, and then Mangini used that as the basis to interpret those parts and do his own take on them.
What?
To me honestly the last 5 albuns felt like a Petrucci/Rudess project that tried to sound like DT. Without Portnoy they didn't just lose one of the most influential members of the band, but the hability to work as a group. I absolute hate ADTOE (worst DT album in my opinion), self entitled sound generic, the last 2 felt more like a group effort, but are average at best and the one between those 4 is just plain boring. Nothing against Mangini, when he got the gig it was pretty clear they were looking for a drummer who could simply emulate Portnoy, not someone who would take part of the creative process. With Portnoy it feels like we're finally getting a new DT album after 15 years.
a dramatic turn of events had all the drum tracks written with a software program by petrucci. I don't see how it could be his best work since mangini basically played what petrucci wrote for him adding a little twist from time to time. ADTOE is definitely not the album that showcases mangini's abilities because the drum parts simply were not written by him
Any way to verify this?
Amazing to hear such criticism from such a musical expert.🤐His drumming to you is “serviceable”?! Unfortunately your channel isn’t.👎
For me (overall):
1. A dramatic turn of events
.
.
2. A view from the top of the world
3. Distance over time
4. Self titled
5. Astonishing
ADTOE is one of their best albums period, maybe not the most imaginative but the songs are killer, the production is very good, the riffs/jams/solos are amazing as always, the drumming is solid, breaking all illusions is probably my favorite song by them (also Johns best solo)
Honestly the last two are switchable, only reason I put ST over astonishing is because of ebemy inside, enigma machine and illumination theory. The astonishing is just cringey idk, a few cool moments but way too long with way too little of interesting content.
Drumming wise, AVFTTOTW (jesus christ) is the best BY FAR, closely followed by distance, the rest felt very bland, self titled had some cool drum parts but the tone was awful, the astonishing I honestly cant remember
Mangini can play Portnoy's drum parts no problem. I doubt Portnoy can play Mangini's parts. Mangini is technically on another level. Portnoy has the character and attitude though.
ADTOE was great album for DT & the best thing about it is mangini was NOT involved in writing, as JP was the one who did the programing for drums & then Mangini did it on actual! Manging is great drummer but his style not work with DT & he is boring as his eara in DT was the baddest albums in DT history! Glad Portnoy return back & hopefully he left up the energy again!
Your up talk is unbearable as well as your lack of understanding of drumming
"Servicable" drumming in the latest album. He has no idea lmao
Jordan rudders is the problem same shit same album 💿 after album !
Why is jordan the problem?
Room temperature IQ take
Mostly mid except for The Astonishing which was hilariosly bad
I honestly think A dramatic turn of events is a top 5 album of theirs
Astonishingly bad
The Astonishing is in my top 4 from them haha