THE ASTONISHING

I have been a Dream Theater fan for a long time and as such have needed to, at times, put effort into liking some of their music. I am thinking of Systematic Chaos in particular right now, but it is certainly not alone in this. Each time, up until this one, I have been able to find things that I really enjoyed.

Astonishing is a good word to include in this album's title, but only because this is the one DT collection that should be completely avoided. Even Black Clouds has a few minutes of tolerable music (no lyrics that were tolerable, but some of the music was pretty good).

Dream Theater are, after all, the McDonalds of modern prog rock.

What they do well, they really excel in even if it is a little low on substance.

What they do poorly, well, is likely to make you feel ill. Listening back to The Astonishing now, it stands out in their catalog as a kind of summary of all of the worst ideas from their previous work. Not really something that I was hoping for.

Overplaying is ok, but not when it is stuffed with, and wrapped in cheese. Listening to this album is the aural equivalent of eating a cheese sandwich with an outer layer of soft cheese that has sat out for too long instead of bread. Messy, and hard to get away from after experiencing it. Worse, it just feels horrible.

Complexity is great in music, indeed often preferred by me as things like odd time and weird phrases and harmony hold my interest. Here, nothing, not anything, is unique or seems new. Instead, we are treated to simple ballads and what feels like complex rawk interludes.

Bad lyrics are tolerable if, and only if, the melodies are compelling and the compositions are full of twists that are both memorable and unexpected. Here, we only get bad lyrics sung technically well, but without any real emotion. These are on top of the weakest DT compositions since their first effort.

I used to hear arguments that DT was really just a metal band that practiced a lot and I did not really get that point of view. If this were the only DT album I had heard, I suspect that may be exactly my opinion.

If only someone asked "Do you want fries with that?" at the end of this monstrously overlong and overbearing solution to insomnia, I would feel comforted by the idea that the band intended it as a joke. Unfortunately, it comes across as being dead serious, as though they thought they were doing something important. They were not.

I am sorry to do this. This album is simply not worth ever hearing, even just to satisfy some mild curiosity. Listening to this album can only make your life worse.