THE ASTONISHING

It took me a while to get into this long concept album about the possible future of the human race in this technology era where the most tragic consequence, would be that the music could be done by machines! At first, i had trouble to feel the flow of the songs with many moods ant rhythm changes from one song to the other. This is a opera rock of another kind of what the band has done recently. The addition of the orchestra, a choir, classical arrangements, with violin and a lot of piano from Jordan make this album less heavy but that doesn't mean that we don't have any heavy parts in this 2 hours music. We can hear some influences from SODTI and SFAM in various passages and of the band Circle of Illusion that made a opera kind of album of that nature few years ago. I really enjoy to hear the band switching in a different territory for a brief moment touching folk, exotic and circus music. The short interludes with special sound effects of robotic machines, military march etc, bring a soundtrack dimension to this music. There is still the big sound of John in the lead guitar, the more direct rock approach and those melancholic parts with Jordan playing the piano or James singing a power ballad. It seems clear that the contribution of Jordan and John have been very important here to create this ambitious album. Mike Mangini's drums don't have enough punch to fit in this rather well produced music. There is no long epic song here, unless you see the whole album as a big piece. In conclusion, this could be the Tales From Topographic Oceans album of Dream Theater, a work that reveals itself after a certain amount of listening.