Rudess plays a lot of piano on this album which is great because he is a great player.
Limiting the song writing team does make the music more focused and a better fit for Petrucci’s lyrics and story. The other member who really shines is Jordan Rudess who co-wrote all the music with John Petrucci. LaBrie is a very busy man on this album and nails it. While it’s hard to tell which character he is sometimes, that’s why they make lyric sheets letting you know who is saying what. He sounds absolutely incredible from start to finish. Performance wise, this is the best album from James LaBrie ever. The story is really told via the lyrics the way it should be done. The other good news is that there’s not a lot of unnecessary sound effects and dialogue. In fact, I don’t think I would edit anything out except for those damn 5 noise machine tracks! Yes I know they are kinda part of the plot but they aren’t stand alone pieces of music. While “The Astonishing” isn’t perfect from start to finish, I think it actually has far more great moments than not. And while each of those are considered classics, I think each have a fair amount of filler and could have been each paired down to a single album. “The Wall” and “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway” are shorter albums because of the limitations at the time of vinyl. The reason is this is a double album of the CD age versus the vinyl age.
That’s a LOT to take in at once and a lot to take in over and over again. It’s a true double album at around 131 minutes. There’s no getting around that this album is really long. So the next key is if all of those songs are actually GOOD songs. Each song, while yes being important to the overall story lyrically, are separate ideas musically. With 34 songs, well 29 songs if you exclude the 5 noise machine tracks, even for a double album, this could a lot of separate ideas or ideas that run into each other, thus needing each other to exist. And this is further into the future than that album! I mean couldn’t it have been told without this Dyson vacuum looking machines? Just say there is no music at all. I do wonder if the NOMACS are actually all that important to the story.
I won’t analyze the details of the story. The story is somewhat cliche and even obvious at times but the emotion and sentiment of the lyrics always seem to work for me despite all else. This is mostly due to the songs sometimes being forced to fit a plot line and not being true songs that can be enjoyed separately from the whole album.
The story line is a combination of Game of Thrones and 2112, so it’s not necessarily original but what is at this point? I will admit that for a fan of prog, I am not always keen on concept albums that tell a story. This isn’t just a concept album but a true rock opera, or even a musical of sorts. “The Astonishing” really goes beyond what I had even predicted them to do. The key was considering what the band hadn’t done up to this point of their career. Part of me was reading into the overall delay of this album, which was initially targeted for the Fall of 2015. I should point out that on the Facebook page, I did make an insane prediction that the next album would be a double concept album. The hype machine went into overdrive once it was announced exactly what the band was planning to do with this album. This has become one of the most anticipated albums of Dream Theater’s career.
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