u/G-Unit11111

As a long time fan of this album, I've seen it performed live 3 times, and twice with a full stage performance that included both OM 1 and 2. I decided to put all 3 albums in a consecutive playlist and listen to them in order. So here's my thoughts.

1 - Still an epic. From start to finish it's easily the most cohesive part of the entire trilogy.

2 - It's very mid. Like a lot of people here are saying that it's the sequel that nobody asked for, but probably the hidden gem of this album is easily "Circles" which is a 3 minute dialogue between the protagonist and Dr. X (who was played by the late great Ronnie James Dio).

3 - I can kind of get what Geoff Tate was going for here, since it's basically showing the Dr. X side of the whole story, but it does kind of fall a bit flat towards the end.

All in all, 3 was a very interesting and unexpected end to the trilogy. 1 is still one of the best concept albums of all time and it's very hard to top that. Expanding it to a whole trilogy was certainly an interesting move.