DREAM THEATER THE MUSICAL?! | The Astonishing | Mike The Music Snob Reviews

You need to listen to Marchen by Sound Horizon.

James Labrie in my opinion was the absolute best on this album. His vocal range / acting range was really shown on this. His performance on this was nothing less than incredible, regardless of what you think of the album as a whole. There are a whole lot of filler songs that probably shouldn't exist. They could have made a normal 12ish song album with this. But whatever. Just Skip the crap songs. The good ones are SO FUCKIN GOOD that it's worth it.

man that music in the background wasn't necessary

I totally ignored this album for like eight years and the I went back and listened to it with a new open mind. Instead of wanting a DT album crusher (you know... glass prison) I went in as listening to an Lloyd Webber, like Phantom of the opera (which I really love) and then something new hit me. The album is really awesume musically. I dont care for the story but the prog-musical is absolutely astonishing (hehe) No, for real!

(But they could really let go with the sound fx)

I loved your reaction, really in depth and accurate in my opinion

it's awful

can you review Metallica's hardwired to self destruct? great album in my opinion and I listen to most of the trucks today after listening to it. really good comeback album to them

House of cards

I totally love how you explain this album! It's definitely not my favorite DT album, but I appreciate what they were going for. I've only listened to it all the way through once (mostly because it's so long) but I hope to again and I hope to have a better view of it. I wasn't a huge fan the execution of the story, but I'm totally down to change my mind. Also Path That Divides is a killer track. Rock On! \m/

The tyrants like "uh, no"

So how bad is the whiskey you are drinking, or are you wanting it as cold as legally aloud?

I tried. My first DT album and I'm sure it wasn't really a metal album. I just snatched it before FYE closed because I prefer CD's over downloads. Listened to it twice, but it didn't stick. Sounded way less like metal and more like experimental symphonic musical rock, or something. I can never judge it because I don't know if they were trying something other than metal, or if I just didn't pay attention to it hard enough, or what. From what I can tell, it was something completely new to most people and I'm glad somebody tried to step outside the box, but it just wasn't quite for me.

Nice video!
The way I see it is something in the lines you said. I liked the music review too.
The CD in the poster behind you made a better metal album, while telling a story.
I also liked the ambition shown with this album. Perhaps an HQ with the lyrics as the dialogs along audio media in an Astonishing pack would be better to tie everything cleanly together for the majority of listeners?
Anyway, great upload!

Really like the album because it's Dream Theater with that said its not in their top 5 or 6 in my book. Wish you would check out Styx's 'The Mission' its a GREAT concept album from start to finish.

This album sounded like someone read Romeo and Juliet and didn't like how it ended. I really loved Act I but in Act II I was expecting at least 3 people to die and was actually disappointed by it. I really liked this album and kept a couple songs from it in my playlist, but I think I was, for whatever reason, disappointed by the happy ending... and the "yell" that blew Gabriel's voice out sounded more like a groan, was expecting... more.

React to Ice Nine Kills new album the silver scream

The background music is way to loud

I would love to see this as a movie it’s a really unique story with an interesting world

Haven't seen you comment on TSO - have you seen/heard "Beethoven's Last Night"?

Wha?

I love the review! I honestly loved the album! I saw the whole thing live on The Astonishing tour. It was amazing!!!

Man so I've had this album since the release and I tried repeatedly to just listen to it. I honestly must've missed the point that they are telling a full musical saga, and I could never piece together the story when listening. I knew they sure said Gabriel a lot :P

But as far as someone listening to it for the sake of listening to Dream Theater, I was in a pretty similar way. There was a lot of kick ass songs alongside of some songs that were wayyy too lovey-dovey. Coming into Dream Theater on Octavarium, I was confused.

Now I need to go through and listen to the whole thing with the guide.

do a review on Ayreon - The Source

sorry mate .
Dream theaters worst album ever .... bloody shit from start to finish .
i even gave it a second go to see if it would grow on me ... Nope still shit!!!👎👎😣😣😣☹

I would appreciate if you did a review of New therion "beloved antichrist", good afternoon

While i agree that The Astonishing has LaBrie's best vocal performance to date, this truly is the worst of Dream Theater's career. To see them execute a concept in such a boring fashion was a surprise to me, even though they pulled off what they set out to do, but i dont think they intended to illicit a yawn from me. 3 tracks in and I was wondering if this was the same band that released Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, and put together the equally amazing track suite "AA Suite", which are both superior compositions to this. I hope their next album slaps me silly so i forget they ever released this.

The absolute best review of the Astonishing on the Internet! :) I completely agree with everything you said and I loved the way you chose to dissect one song which you think is the most representative of what they where aiming for. The Path That Divides might also be my favorite and I absolutely love this twist of the story even if the ending afterwards is very cliché. I really got the chills when I first listened, being in the right mindset for such an album with the booklet in hands and no one to distract me. I would love if DT chose to reiterate this kind of album while aiming at a better story, but sadly seeing how it was mostly received I'm not sure it will happen... I'd die for it though, as it stands in my top 3 DT albums despite all its flaws. :)

I also love how you're opinion is very detailed and how you do not hide from what you really enjoy - we can see it on your face when you're singing along! I think you've just got a new subscriber! ;)

Well bands like rhapsody released concept albums telling stories all the time

Pushing a story in music form? I love dream theater but a band called "The chronicles project" does a really damn good job with the album "when darkness falls" :D

did coheed and cambria do this a while back? A full saga/story told through out an album.

You should review Bitches Brew- Miles Davis

The worst opinion of mine for this album is that it got more and more cheesy to me until my initial rating went from 8/10 to 6.6/10.

I dont know if you do punk but before I got into metal I grew up with punk and one of them was Strung Out, a progrock/metal/punk band. If you wanna review it, it would be awesome! Check out Transmission Alpha Delta, thats some MetalPunk for you

The cliches are necessary because they are telling us a familiar archetypal story. It's just told in a different way - happens all the time. This is the first of it's kind in music, you can never go wrong with a familiar plot.

I agree on what you said about James vocals! He sounds great but isn't that dynamic through the whole album. I'd love to hear this album with different vocalists that represents a character like an Ayreon album. I think that would make up the dynamics a lot

As a prog aficionado, I love Dream Theater. Granted, I know nothing about music theory, but still, they're just so awesome to listen to. And the music is good on this album. I'm more of a story guy though, so the thing that annoys me is how that album's story falls apart in the last act. DT makes amazing music and can write emotional lyrics like few others. Story, that's slightly different. It's unfortunate. This album's story could have gone through a few rewrites.

Thank you for introducing me to Dream Theater....I hate myself for missing out on their music for so long but look forward to making up for lost time!!! Keep up the great work love the videos.

This album is garbage. To start with, I despise the "We're going to write a really long song but we're going to break it into 1 to 3 minute tracks and nothing is going to actually connect very well into anything else" style of production that Steven Wilson popularized (see: The Incident, his production work on Orphaned Land's Neverending Way Of the
OrWarrior). It makes everything feel completely disjointed and separate, rather than creating a cohesive whole. Arjen Lucassen did the same thing on Ayreon's The Theory Of Everything (which also fell apart for me), and The Whirlwind by Transatlantic was similarly broken.

It's bad when a melodic death metal band can write more cohesive 40 minute
epics than prog bands (See: Insomnium's Winter's Gate album if you haven't already). A single 40 minute long track. I'll take that over a bunch of short ideas that never actually go anywhere.

And even outside of the lack of cohesion, don't even get me started on Dream Theater's attempt to write a score for a Mediocre Disney movie (what the music itself sounds like). I wanted to like The Astonishing, I really did. I bought it. I had it with me when I drove across country. I listened to it several times during that period. It never connected. Part of it is the utterly lame and frankly silly way in which all of the characters are presented, and the grating Christian overtones that the entire thing has. Part of it was how hamfisted the story itself was. I despise EDM, so I want to like the concept, but it all just feels so flat and forced. Also cheesy. It seriously sounds like Petrucci went "Man, I want Disney to give me a movie to score like they did with Phil Collins' Tarzan."

TLDR if you like the new Dream Theater and aren't familiar with Ayreon (as you seem to not be, as you think Dream Theater did something ground breaking here) you should relinquish your title of Prog Snob. :P

Concept: great
Musicianship: Unremarkable. There has never been a DT album that I have hated to listen to but this one did make me hate it. I remember only Descent of the Nomacs (first song I believe and I don't even remember the music just the name because I make fun of that song so much) and Our New World which was actually fairly good. You would think I would like more than one song on a 36 song album...

Ravenskill was the prettiest song

I love DT and I expected another "Metropolis pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory" when I heard they were doing a concept album. They are a victim of their own success in that regard. Had The Astonishing come first we may like it better.

After watching this, I'd love to see you dissect Devin Townsend's Ziltoid the Omniscient album!

¿"Not paying attention to the bass is a beautiful thing"? ¿Wot?

If this was a movie like Tommy, I would probably love it and be less emotionally scarred.

I really wish they would have gotten a couple guest vocalists to sing the parts for the different characters. I understand why they didn't do that but I think it would have helped people understand the story better.

Wasn't scenes from a memory also a story told with music?!?

BG music name please ~

This album was heavily influenced by 2112. Not surprising, huge rush fans

Listening to it I give it a 'meh'.

Ambitious is correct but I think Pink Floyd did it better with The Wall, if only in the way that a lot of the songs can be listened to without the rest of the album (I'm sure some others will disagree with that) needed for context of substance.

Metropolis pt.2 told a coherent story that was sufficiently interesting and I loved almost all of the songs, I think it did what they were trying to do with this album far better and with far more subtlety.

The music was excellent but I think they should have added some more diversity to some of the songs, they got a bit bland after a while. Still very Dream Theatre, though.

I think they could take some notes from Rush's 2112. I know it's a song and not a full album but they still told a great story without glaring cliches (in my opinion).

I agree about the names. I mean, fucking Gabriel!? As in the angel Gabriel?

It got too much like a pantomime at times for me. I'm looking at you the Gift of Music and Losing Faythe. The intro was awesome and they pulled off the epic parts wonderfully, and I really liked Lord Nafaryus. (The song)

The story, lyrics and, like you said, the world building are what really let's it down for me.