“Truth” might be best appreciated as a soundtrack to some imagined film. The hero has finally embarked on the journey that his life has lead up to… well, until the six minute mark when Rudess’s acoustic piano solo shifts the song from Michael Bay to Blues Clues. But don’t worry. At the eight minute mark Petrucci effortlessly shifts from acoustic to electric and throws us hard back into some tragic Greek myth with an absolutely heroic solo.

“State of Grace” is a stunningly tender and romantic song that could squeeze the tears out a Clint Eastwood character. Petrucci supplies the soaring highs, while Rudess gives depth and movement with rich, low octaves and accompanying chords in the right hand. It’s my favorite song on the album.

The album goes on through Brazilian bossa nova-style piano on “Hang 11″, Indonesian gamelan on “From Within”, and “The Rena Song”, dedicated to Petrucci’s wife, Rena Sands Petrucci. The song is explicitly credited to only Petrucci, but the piano part is so well-interwoven I have difficultly imagining the possibility that it was not part of the original composition process. 

Pop this in the CD player, take a bath, do your homework, sleep to it. It’s great music just to have on in the background. This album is one you can keep coming back to— you’ll find that the rhythms and melodies are so complex or quickly changing that you will not be able to memorize or hum along to any of the songs.

If you like short, economical tracks with a definite beat, a raging chorus, and consistent single emotion for the length of the song, you may not appreciate this type of recording. But if you want to get away from “mainstream rock,” and can’t quite handle music that sounds like it just came out of a Blendtech blender, then you will certainly appreciate the one-take musical tapestries that these bona fide virtuosos have offered.