Label: Roadrunnner Records
Release date: 01/29/2016
Producer: John Petrucci
Album length: 130.23 min
Genre: Progressive Metal
The double concept album »The Astonishing« is the most ambitious project in the history of American prog-metal champions Dream Theater. They haven’t taken on anything this ambitious since the concept masterpiece »Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From a Memory« (1999), which a large chunk of the fanbase still considers their ultimate achievement. With »The Astonishing«, which runs for more than two hours, Dream Theater once again tried something new and for the first time ever used real orchestral arrangements, with the Prague philharmonic orchestra coming to their aid. The mastermind behind »The Astonishing« and its dystopian concept of a controlled society of the future, where real music is banned by a tyrannical police regime that only a handful of rebels dare to resist, was guitarist John Petrucci, who wrote all the music tying together the individual acts of this rather complex story together with keyboardist Jordan Rudess. Petrucci drew inspiration for the concept from various sci-fi classics, but it was also his settling of scores with, and a jab at, modern society, where accelerated, digitally driven automation increasingly replaces normal human relationships. At the same time, Petrucci poked fun at the modern music industry, which couldn’t care less about good, inoffensive musical content while force-feeding people ‘anti-music’ at every turn.
Unfortunately, despite the laudable motive that drove him to write it, Petrucci’s concept is no masterpiece. It’s a rather naive (‘far-fetched’) story with utterly unbelievable twists and a typical ‘Hollywood’ happy ending. Rather than a sci-fi classic in the vein of ‘1984’, ‘The Matrix’ or ‘Star Wars’, it reminds me of a children’s animated fairy tale, like the old Yugoslav-American cartoon ‘Čudežni gozd’, where the wicked, ugly Cactus Emperor is turned by a magic potion into a kind and just ruler in the end, after which everybody is happy and content. A short summary of the story goes something like this: in the distant future, the dystopian Great North American Empire has taken over the northeastern part of the former USA, where all music is banned, while surveillance machines called NOMACS (Noise Machines) fly over the heads of the inhabitants. Their electronic sound is the only source of entertainment for the enslaved subjects of the brutal North American empire. The empire is ruled with a tyrant’s hand by Lord Nafaryus, whose greatest pride is his beautiful daughter, Princess Faythe. She falls in love with Gabriel, an icon of the rebel movement who has the rare gift of creating and playing music, with which he inspires the enslaved population.
Nafaryus, who actually has a much softer heart than his brutal, feudal-police regime would suggest, attends an unannounced performance by the rebel icon and, once the initial emotion wears off, soon realizes that Gabriel could threaten his rule. He tries to get rid of him by any means necessary, and his rather obnoxious, social-climbing son, Prince Daryus, who desperately craves his father’s approval, gets tangled up in the plot too. While hunting the rebel leader, Daryus kills Gabriel’s brother Arhys and then, by accident, after thinking his main adversary was closing in on him, badly wounds his own sister Faythe. In the end, an enraged Gabriel takes away his hearing with a deafening scream and, at the plea of the desperate parents, uses his power to heal the dying Faythe. She recovers completely, after which she and Gabriel happily start a life together and raise Arhys’s son, while the deeply moved emperor Nafaryus undergoes a total change of personality and becomes a wise and just ruler. From then on music is allowed again, the NOMACS devices are removed from the empire for good, and the merry celebrations can begin. Lucky for us that Petrucci is a much better musician and composer than writer, because otherwise the end result would probably be pitiful. As it is, you have to admit that his and Rudess’s music mostly manages to tie together the individual acts of this not-so-innovative and not-so-profound concept. By the way, the first musician to come up with the idea of a concept album about a dystopian world where music is strictly forbidden was none other than the legendary Frank Zappa, with the masterpiece »Joe’s Garage« (1979).
Singer James LaBrie got an especially demanding job, since he had to adapt his vocals to the different characters in the concept after the band decided not to call in various vocal ‘assistants’ to slip into particular roles. You could say that LaBrie, who sings in outstanding form throughout the entire album, handled his difficult task brilliantly. The fact that »The Astonishing« came out less than a year after the ambitious double album from another famous metal band didn’t go unnoticed. Compared to »The Astonishing«, though, Iron Maiden’s latest effort »The Book of Souls« (2015) is at ‘kindergarten’ level and comes across as ‘holy simplicity’ when it comes to arrangement and rhythmic complexity and polish, so any overblown comparison between the two albums is off the table, apart from the fact that both bands burned out a little on their super-ambitious plans.
»The Astonishing« is played in the recognizable, highly complex but mostly melodic Dream Theater style, which for the most part actually makes sense and which they’ve cultivated since drummer Mike Mangini joined the band. Most of the songs sit somewhere between progressive metal and progressive rock, with no shortage of melancholic ballads (there are even too many of them), as well as a few heavier moments with aggressive metal riffs. The rhythm section of bassist John Myung and Mangini, an otherwise outstanding duo, sits a touch further in the background than usual on most songs this time, which will disappoint some, but on the other hand both virtuosos did their jobs perfectly well.
Up front for most of the album are Petrucci’s guitar acrobatics, which he more or less manages to rein in so it doesn’t all tip over into full-on solo chaos, as happened on some past albums, and complex symphonic arrangements led by Rudess’s keyboard orgies, which are sometimes a bit too egocentrically pumped up even for fans who’ve ‘seen it all’. This sort of thing from Rudess isn’t exactly a surprise, in fact it was almost expected, but it’s still a slight letdown after he’d started showing promising signs of team spirit, subtlety and balance on the previous two Dream Theater records.
Pompous orchestral arrangements, paired with guitar and keyboard acrobatics, are this time the driving force of most songs, which already goes for the opening instrumental melodrama »Dystopian Oveture«, reminiscent of Hollywood-style film music. Without Petrucci’s and Rudess’s hyperactive variations, this track could have been used as the soundtrack to some movie epic. On the melodic, bombastic »The Gift of Music«, LaBrie shines, blending his mighty vocal approach nicely with melodic guitar and keyboard passages while choral vocal harmonies back him up. Of course, Dream Theater wouldn’t be Dream Theater if they didn’t complicate things in the closing section with complex improvisations, which luckily don’t wreck the framework of this very good composition. The upbeat »The Answer« features a very pretty acoustic guitar and piano arrangement, while LaBrie’s vocals get enough room this time to come to life in full splendor.
»A Better Life«, which first introduces the brutal militancy of the oppressive regime, is full of dramatic tempo shifts and vocal melodrama, with an epic motif up front. »Lord Nafaryus«, which immortalizes the rather unstable Nafaryus, who hides a soft heart under a mask of ruthlessness and stiffness, has a dark atmosphere and almost chaotic rhythmic turns before melodic harmonies quickly take over. Because we soon find out that Nafaryus is no wicked ‘bogeyman’ to be feared, but merely a prisoner of his own dogmatism and pride, the dramatic message and gloomy atmosphere somehow never really come into their own. »A Saviour in the Square«, which depicts the moment Gabriel gives a solo concert for the rebels, features a boisterous opening guitar solo, and you can’t shake the feeling that Petrucci poured a piece of himself into Gabriel’s character. The mood gets noticeably darker when LaBrie’s vocals kick in, marking the moment Nafaryus shows up on the scene with his family and entourage.
»When Your Time Has Come« features synth variations that recall the golden era of neo-prog rock, before it all gives way to piano-and-organ harmonies, with LaBrie’s vocals once again the main source of the prevailing melodic direction. »Act of Faythe«, where Gabriel meets Princess Faythe for the first time, is a love ballad a bit too sugary not to leave a saccharine aftertaste. »Three Days«, a sudden moment of total ambient turnaround, is again a somewhat punchier and darker composition with razor-sharp guitar passages and LaBrie’s convincing vocal chameleonism as he convincingly ‘plays’ several different roles. On »Brother, Can You Hear Me?«, after an opening military march, mighty symphonic harmonies and dramatic piano passages take over, with LaBrie delivering his closest possible imitation of Freddie Mercury.
»A Life Left Behind«, which constantly drifts somewhere between an energetic prog-metal power surge and a symphonic, melancholic ballad, features numerous complex keyboard variations and yet another excellent vocal performance from LaBrie. »Ravenskill«, one of the many pompous moments on »The Astonishing«, overflows with melodramatic arrangements and punchy guitar passages, while melodic harmonies once again dominate on the wings of the Canadian singing champ’s superb vocals. »Chosen« is yet another piano-driven, superbly sung ballad, of which there’s no shortage on this album. This one is, for a change, less sugary thanks to Petrucci’s long but unobtrusive and just-subtle-enough guitar soloing.
»A Tempting Offer« is the next swerve into darker waters, with plenty of dramatic orchestral moments. The same goes for »The X Aspect«, which will please many longtime fans, even though it has a short closing arrangement with bagpipes, drawn from Scottish folk music. The epic »A New Beginning« is one of the better moments on »The Astonishing«, even if at times it almost overly recalls the ‘epic Hollywood metal’ of Italian symphonic-metal ‘knights’ Rhapsody of Fire. The first act of the conceptual odyssey wraps up with »The Road to Revolution«, which is soaked in dramatic symphonic arrangements, while it’s all held together by epic and eclectic singing that earns LaBrie full congratulations.
The second act of this sprawling concept, i.e. the second disc, opens with the orchestral instrumental »2285 Entr’acte«, followed by the excellent »Moment of Betrayal«, which is even one of the best things Dream Theater have done in the past few years, since it’s just complex, punchy and unpretentious enough to let all the prog-metal champions’ best sonic elements shine at full strength. »Heaven’s Cove«, led along by subtle acoustic guitar chords accompanied by choral vocal harmonies, boasts a mysterious mood. The first part of the song is pure symphonic prog rock, followed by a prog-metal continuation. »Begin Again« is another pleasant, acoustic-driven ballad, of which there are almost too many on »The Astonishing«, even though none of them is bad. The closing motif comes off a little too cheesy this time, reminding me of the music for Cinderella’s ceremonial procession through Disneyland. »The Path That Divides« is a somewhat more serious and darker creation with a dramatic plot twist, yet another epic vocal performance and battle cries. On »The Walking Shadow«, LeBrie convincingly gets into the role of the greedy murderer, Prince Daryus, who is practically bursting with bloodlust. »My Last Farewell« is a melancholic yet punchy moment in which the killer of Gabriel’s brother realizes too late, and repents of, what he’s done after nearly killing his own sister.
»Losing Faythe« is another love power ballad, while »Whispers On The Wind« is merely its companion piece. »Hymn Of a Thousand Voices« is a completely unusual experiment for Dream Theater, featuring a string, folk-rock arrangement and choral vocal harmonies. »Our New World« is another upbeat song, closer to (neo-)progressive rock than progressive metal, and one of those that will probably polarize the Dream Theater fanbase because of its unusually cheerful mood. The album ends with the title track, »Astonishing«, built as a kind of ‘final revelation’, although at its core, despite some interesting sonic touches, it’s yet another love ballad with a strong orchestral backdrop, of which the album really has a ton.
»The Astonishing« is undoubtedly yet another Dream Theater album that will divide its fans’ opinions. Some will ‘praise it to the skies’ for its exceptionally rich, orchestra-enriched, complex sound with a few brilliant moments, while others will recoil at its pretentiousness, long-windedness and shallow concept. Petrucci’s conceptual odyssey about a dystopian-futuristic tyranny where all music is banned is certainly no easy listen, as it demands exceptional concentration. The truth about the album’s quality lies somewhere in between: given time, once the listener has invested enough in it, »The Astonishing« does eventually ‘get under your skin’ and rewards that kind of patience, but at the same time it’s no masterpiece either, even though it desperately wants to be, and Petrucci has invested practically everything in getting his band to create yet another of their classics. Maybe he’d even have pulled it off if »The Astonishing« had been cut down to one disc and certain sonic ‘filler’ that stretches it all out too much had been stripped away. As it is, the end result is ‘merely’ a very good album that could have been even better if Dream Theater hadn’t gotten drunk on excessive ambition, which in the end turned out to be a double-edged sword.
author: Peter Podbrežnik
rating: 8.5 / 10
Tracklist:
ACT I
1. Descent Of The Nomacs (1:11)
2. Dystopian Overture (4:51)
3. The Gift Of Music (4:00)
4. The Answer (1:53)
5. A Better Life (4:39)
6. Lord Nafaryus (3:28)
7. A Savior In The Square (4:14)
8. When Your Time Has Come (4:19)
9. Act Of Faythe (5:01)
10. Three Days (3:44)
11. The Hovering Sojourn (0:28)
12. Brother, Can You Hear Me? (5:11)
13. A Life Left Behind (5:49)
14. Ravenskill (6:01)
15. Chosen (4:32)
16. A Tempting Offer (4:20)
17. Digital Discord (0:48)
18. The X Aspect (4:13)
19. A New Beginning (7:41)
20. The Road To Revolution (3:35)
ACT II
21. 2285 Entr’acte (2:20)
22. Moment Of Betrayal (6:12)
23. Heaven’s Cove (4:20)
24. Begin Again (3:54)
25. The Path That Divides (5:10)
26. Machine Chatter (1:03)
27. The Walking Shadow (2:58)
28. My Last Farewell (3:44)
29. Losing Faythe (4:13)
30. Whispers On The Wind (1:37)
31. Hymn Of A Thousand Voices (3:39)
32. Our New World (4:25)
33. Power Down (1:25)
34. Astonishing (5:51)
Lineup:
James LaBrie – vocals
John Petrucci – guitar
John Myung – bass
Jordan Rudess – keyboards
Mike Mangini – drums, percussion
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Eric Rigler – Scottish bagpipes on “The X Aspect”
Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
