Just listened to this and had a really pleasant first listen as someone that hasn’t touched anything since Soundsystem. Might check out the last few (though I heard there’s a dropoff between from chaos and the most recent 2 before this)
I think it’s widely speculated that Nick wasn’t fully “present” or invested in the making of it because of the ending of his relationship with Nicole Scherzinger around the time they would’ve been writing and recording DTOM in ‘04 and into ‘05. again not facts just speculation from fans I believe.
I remember seeing them on MuchMusic/Fuse back in the day promoting that album and Nick looked out of his mind. Heavy eyes, slurring his words, etc. Think he might have had some issues in that regard. This is just an aside that is not about Nick, specifically, but there was also rumblings about there being a bit more turmoil behind the scenes than we realized and they had to sort of work it out before Uplifter. And you know, all of their demos got leaked before DTOM got finished so their enthusiasm was at a minimum. Overall, it just wasn’t a good era of the band.