This monolith of an album is going to take time to digest. After putting some time between themselves and their split with brain child Mike Portnoy, the band find themselves a few albums along in their separation and sitting on yet another masterpiece.
Dream Theater is no stranger to concept albums, and if you were to look up the term in the latest edition of the dictionary, I am almost positive that The Astonishing will be sitting there staring at you in the face. The collection is compromised of 34 tracks on two separate album that last over two hours. While many of the tracks are fillers, they help create a cohesive theme, and it's obvious the band spaced apart each track with samples and layers to help develop, well, ASTONISHING sounds. At times the album feels like a soundtrack to a theme park, and hardly a progressive rock band. The players on the team are all incredibly proficient and Petrucci is still a wizard on the axe, claiming his rightful heir of the throne amongst the metal gods.
We're not here to breakdown track by track, but instead just draw attention to albums that require your attention. While this one is certainly no easy feat, it makes for great road trip listening when there's nothing but time and the open road to be had. The Astonishing truly is an entertaining album.
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