THE ASTONISHING

Turns out John Petrucci's passion project known as Dream Theater goes one step further from Prog Metal to bland Rock Opera. Of course what can I say about this album? Its astonishingly bad... ok I really just wanted the pun.

But in all seriousness, this album, as good as... well... one song is, the rest of fairly boring, overblown, and way over the top. I've been a fan of the bands double albums for a while, Metropolis Part 2 and Six Degrees, but this is completely over the top and way too long (and that's coming from a Flower Kings fan). Unlike TFK, this album has barely any good songwriting and just comes off bland and uninspiring. The instrumentation is still good but Mike's drums here just don't sound right. I do like the large concept idea of this album, and there are a few songs on this album that I can say "hey, that wasn't too bad", but for the most part this is just way too much. Petrucci should've listened to Mike Portnoy, they should've went on a hiatus and come back with new ideas. Unfortunately for the band, Petrucci works like a machine (which is a blessing and a curse), he likes to keep pushing out albums whether the albums are not of top quality.

Without Portnoy, this band has gone from great to merely mediocre. This is one example as to why the band should've went on a hiatus, to avoid something like this. If you want hard hitting Dream Theater of the now, go elsewhere, give this album a shot in case you like it though. I wasn't a fan of this album but give it a shot either way, but I would suggest 'Distance Over Time', it is much better than this album, and it has a more retro Dream Theater writing style. Unfortunately, this wasn't my thing, the rock opera elements just don't work for me, if I want to listen to Rock opera I'll listen to Queen.

Either way, my final words are: This could've been better, but overall, this just didn't have anything that intrigued me. The only song I enjoyed was 'A New Beginning', but even that song was a bit of a pill. Anyways, if you want Dream Theater at their best, I'd go elsewhere, because this album is just really long and it can be hard to get through.