The Astonishing

I’ll be frank here; I honestly had very little hopes for this album. Their last self-titled album was the biggest meh in a series of predictable and boring releases for over a decade now. Okay maybe in some ways, Black Clouds And Silver Linings can be considered an exception as it did away with some of the flab that made their past releases so sleep-inducing by bringing a bit of their Images & Words/Awake songwriting to the forefront, but still. The fact that it was going to be 2 discs worth of material was enough to get alarm bells ringing. Seriously this is a message to all prog bands out there; unless you have astute and amazing songwriting skills, double albums are very rarely a good idea. I mean c’mon since the turn of the century DT has been known for stretching their songs out way past their time using it as an excuse for being superficially progressive, and this is just pushing it to the extreme.

At the very least, I was quite pleasantly surprised to see that no song exceeded the 10 minute mark with the longest song being seven and a half minutes! Wow okay then, maybe there’s some hope after all, I thought. These guys finally kept the “Need at least three songs longer than 10 minutes in our albums” fetish (A Dramatic Turn Of Events was the worst offender in this department) in their pants this time. Well they did the same with their last album but cocked it up with shitty songwriting and finishing the album with a freaking 22 minute long borefest of the highest order. I have yet to meet a single fan or person face-to-face who actually thinks “Illumination Theory” was a good song on that album. Seriously guys like let that shit go already, you’re just not good at it anymore. Kindly accept that fact and move on.

But one the other hand, seeing so many interlude tracks and instrumentals barely exceeding the two minute mark, my guard immediately went up. Would this be the same problem that plagued records like “Testimony Of The Ancients” and “Nightfall In Middle Earth” having awesome songs being ruined by heaps of instrumental and narrative filler adding nothing to the music whatsoever and only serving to prolong the length of the album? Either which way, the prospects didn’t look too good. But anyways, back to the album.

I heard both the singles (“Moment Of Betrayal” and “The Gift Of Music”) that had been released a month before the album release, and I was (initially) quite underwhelmed. Neither song really did anything for me in the least except for a few sections here and there. Although “The Gift Of Music” (if I could just change the title and lyrics) did grow a bit on me after a few listens and the chorus of “Moment Of Betrayal” is actually catchy plus both songs actually did put a considerable emphasis on song structure rather than the instrumental sections. Now that I come to think of it, after listening to the entire album, those two singles are probably the better songs off the album.

Oh and the lyrics are just vomit inducing. I mean okay, they never head great lyrics, but here coupled with Labrie’s annoying whining is just grating in every sense of the word and had me cringing every time. Pass me the barf bag already. Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence too suffered from the same problem. I mean just take a look at this stanza from “The Gift Of Music”. Like the song title itself wasn’t cheesy enough.

People just don't have the time for music any more.
And no one seems to care
My friends have seen the chosen one
A quest for freedom has begun

Oh and believe me, it gets worse:

There walks a god among us
Who's seen the writing on the wall.
He is the revolution
He'll be the one to save us all.

Yeah no shit sonny boy. How about you become a freaking messiah and take up teaching the masses now? Wake up people and prepare yourselves for the new world order blah blah blah. Blearrgh! I mean sweet Jesus (irony!!), are you guys even for real? I’m sure even 12 year olds could come up with better lyrics than that in their sleep now. Yeah I think that pretty much sums it up. The keyboard work in the song is nice though, along with the guitar in certain parts. Yeah I know I sound like an elitist prick, trashing lyrics that don’t even matter in the grand scheme of things, but seriously you simply cannot call yourselves one of the longest running bands in prog and still write lyrics of this calibre. Keep in mind that the very fact that I used that word in the case of this sorry excuse for lyrics denotes that I’m actually being generous for a change. Suck on that one fanboys.

So on the whole, how does this album fare? Well sleep-inducingly okay, if I had to summarize it. I seriously wish I could just leave it at that and go on with my life, but then again, a review is a review. For starters, yes it is an improvement over the last two albums in case you were wondering. Yeah they caught the annoying “Let’s put random interludes in between the songs to stretch it out to a double album” bug, but at least the songwriting is stronger this time around, which does provide some relief that there may be actual hope for their next album after all.

Some of the songs like “The Gift Of Music” (ignore the lyrics though), “A Better Life” (the most metal song on the album) “A Savoir In The Square”, “Moment Of Betrayal”, “The Path That Divides” and "Our New World" do break out of the traditional DT shell, surprisingly offering quite a few ear perking moments and interesting ideas not to mention the band actually sounds cohesive and tight, but I was gazing at the clock most of the time, surprised that not even an hour had passed by. Yawn. I mean my pillow was already beckoning me even before the first disc was over, so make of that what you will. Some of the interludes and other songs with rampant piano playing sounded more like elevator music with vocals rather than anything associated with progressive metal. Not that there’s anything wrong with that at all, but then again that’s all that it is - inoffensively bland. Most of the songs sound way too samey and homogeneous to actually be able to pick out standouts tracks from all the mush. Okay maybe that was a tad harsh, but you get the drift. John Petrucci is in his same old solo whipping frenzy mode as ever before, and thankfully there aren’t too many times where he goes overboard. Great solo in “A New Beginning” by the way. Too bad the song is boring. Disc 2 kicks up the symphonic factor and crazy piano runs, but again fails to make much of an impression. The intro of “Hymn Of A Thousand Voices” sounds more like something I would hear in a country song. The violin so does not work guys, so please knock that shit off already.

All in all, Dream Theater do improve on some of their flaws (actual songs, no excessive wankery, having an actual flow to the album etc) but cock it up yet again by having just too much music on display. A good piece of advice to the band for all future endeavors: Too much music is still too music at the end of the day guys, no matter how hard you might try. There’s very little variance or ideas to keep you interested in the album all through, no matter how much of a patient listener you may claim to be. The title “The Astonishing” is a complete fucking misnomer just in case you were wondering; there is nothing even remotely astonishing about this album, except for the fact that they actually though having a 2 hour long album was a good idea. Now come to think of it, “The Astonishing Thought” would’ve been a much more appropriate title for the album methinks. Goddamn how many times have I said that word already now?

If symphonic prog of the highest order stretched out to a meandering two hours plus is your perfect cup of tea, you’ll probably cream your pants over this. However prog or not, if you like actually remembering the music you listen to, I would advise you to distance yourself from this album and go back to spinning Black Clouds & Silver Linings for the nth time if you haven’t already. For the curious, just listen to the songs I listed. I know I did, so maybe that’s saying something.

Anyways if you a fan of the band, go right ahead and listen to the album. Hell in all probability, you’ll probably enjoy it a lot more than I did. It is better than the last two after all. Then again, I fucking loathed their most technical and acclaimed (read overrated and overlong) album Scenes From A Memory (more like Scenes From A Wankery), accusing it of having all of the worst excesses of prog music, so what do I know?