DREAM THEATER SURVIVOR 2016: Results -> A Change Of Seasons wins!

Satisfied with the results?

  • Total voters
    10
More riffs and less songs is the key. The story, which is lame, but so are the majority of fictional tales told by metal/rock bands, is going to be lame either way. If you cut 30 mins of plot from the album (mostly the middle/end of the first act which is nothing but the same love song over and over again), add 10 mins back in of instrumental jamming with some heavier focus on riffing, basslines, and drum stuff it'd be a killer album (despite the plot). Everything is there: incredible melodies, great singing from James, and an ability to self-edit the wankery (though not the breadth of the whole).

People knock on the second act of the album, but honestly I find it far superior. I can only assume that these folks don't like the plot (which is ok, the plot isn't amazing), but the storytelling in the second act shows a far better understanding of pacing than the first act, where we spend literally 3-4 songs that can be summarized by the sentence, "Gabriel and Faythe saw each other and love was in the air."
 
I'm going to need some time with this one.
Night Prowler said:
3 songs from each CD will be promoted.
Click to expand...
That's about 5 songs too many if you ask me. :p But since that is the case, I intend on figuring out the three from each disc that I like best, and mercilessly voting everything else out as quickly as possible.
 
Ok, my quick take on The Astonishing.

The songs I'm not voting for are either quite good (Overture, Brother, New Beginning, Revolution, Entr'acte, Path) or incredible (Gift of Music, Better Life, Lord Nefaryus, Three Days, Moment of Betrayal, Heaven's Cove, Losing Faythe, Hymn, New World).

- The first three tracks of Act Two are top tier Dream Theater. I don't get why Heaven's Cove is overlooked/disliked. The intro is amazing and the vocal melodies (though brief) are so damn catchy.
- The Nefaryus tracks and verses throughout the album are stellar.
- Losing Faythe is a beautiful song on an album of beautiful songs. JLB's performance here is striking.
- I do not understand why people like Ravenskill so much. It's one of the low points of the album, as well as everything around it. Those five songs in a row really drag down the momentum. They could have been severely edited to save time.

Overall, I love the first half of Act One. I really do. But everything after Brother, Can You Hear Me? is a slog. Thankfully, the second half of New Beginning and Revolution are very solid tunes (especially that guitar solo). Act Two, in my opinion, is far superior. The only issue is Begin Again, which murders the momentum.

The biggest problem with The Astonishing is that it is simply too long. The NOMACS stuff gets in the way. I know they are meant to act as scene breaks, but it's just annoying.

Pro-tip: make a playlist of the album, delete all of the NOMACS tracks except the first one (Descent) and the last one (Power Down). When used as a bookend, it has a nice effect. But 5 NOMACS is too much. Also delete: Chosen, Begin Again. Now, this still leaves the album at 2 hours, but listen to this and tell me it doesn't flow better. It cuts some of the balladeering monotony out of Act One and makes the first half of Act Two pretty badass.

I give Act One a 7.9/10 and Act Two an 8.4/10, leaving the album at 8.1/10. I am not rating the NOMACS tracks as songs, obviously, or they would drag down the rating of the entire album. However, I don't think it's fair to rate this album based solely on the strengths of individual songs. I have to take into account the story, the pacing, and the ability to self-edit and restrain one's creativity for the sake of the whole. DT doesn't do that very well here.

The NOMACS tracks should be trimmed, 2-4 songs could go with some alterations, and the story is just full of holes. First of all, you've got a musical about no one being able to produce music that is full of the most beautiful music ever and you've created a world where no one can sing, yet all of these characters are singing! That flaw in creative logic alone annoys the crap out of me. Either the entire thing should be from Gabriel's perspective or no one should sing until they come into contact with Gabriel in the story (this would be very challenging to create, but if done right could be really interesting).

So taking into account the flaws in the concept, story, lack of self-restraint, and annoying NOMACS, I feel it's fair to knock the final rating down to a 7.5/10.
 
Last edited:
I want to like your post but you just cut two of my favorites. :nonono:​
 
Mosh said:
I want to like your post but you just cut two of my favorites. :nonono:​
Click to expand...

Neither one of them are bad. Both 7 or 8/10 in my book. Begin Again is actually quite good. The problem is: they are unnecessary. Act One is so stuffed with ballads that it doesn't need another one at the end of the act that neither advances the plot nor tells the listener anything new. Same goes for Begin Again, which has slightly more to say, but is completely misplaced in the track order and honestly could be cut without losing anything from the story.

Kill your darlings an' all that.
 
Haven't listened to this since seeing it live earlier this year.

Disc 1
I like the NOMAC tracks. They act as nice breaks in between long slabs of music. If anything I wish they were better integrated into the songs, they are pretty much non existent outside of their tracks despite being all over the artwork for this album. They were cool live too, was pretty exciting when they made my seat rumble.

Just going to talk about my favorite songs and what I'm voting for:

Dystopian Overture - Awesome track that gets even more enjoyable once you're familiar with the themes they introduce. Love the call and response between all the instruments in the middle. My favorite part is when it calms down for the brass section and goes into that big theme with the tribal drums.

The Gift of Music - JM is actually mixed really clearly in this. I like his basslines on this tune, he is doing more than doubling JP. If there were more songs like this on the album it probably would've been received better. It's short but it's dynamic and has a lot of exciting twists and turns. The instrumental at the end is classic DT, wish they had more of that.

A Better Life - Awesome song. Again, they did a great job setting up the characters with this album. With this you know what kind of character Ahyrs is and what his motivations are. His near betrayal later on in the album makes sense because they set him up well. The song is awesome too. Some great heavy moments and, again, lots of nice twists and turns to keep it exciting.

Three Days - Seriously, JLB nails all the Nefaryus parts. This song is one of the best. It's over the top but that's the sort of thing these long rock operas need. You have to have fun moments to break it up a bit. The jazzy bits are fantastic. Blast beats!

A Life Left Behind - One of the major highlights of the album. The intro is a Yes ripoff but the meat of the song is excellent. One of the best choruses on the album too. This is one to promote.

Ravenskill - I agree that the album gets exhausting here, but I think it's not so much because the music is bad as much as it's all been the same sort of songs for the past hour and it's starting to overstay its welcome. I think the album would improve with a shorter first act and maybe put some of the better songs in the second act to make it less boring and story driven.
I actually think these songs work better by themselves. Ravenskill has a really great atmosphere in the beginning and some awesome melodies. Probably the most cinematic song on the album.

A Tempting Offer - The first JR solo on the whole album and it's awesome. Has a frantic feel that perfectly complements the story. This one has a slow start but once it gets going it's a great track. I love the "he'll never want again" part. Great JLB performance there. He is really the MVP on this album.

A New Beginning - Another major highlight on the album. Things really start to pick back up to the quality of the first half of the disc here. The staccato vocals are very Portnoy-esque, didn't expect them to do anything like that again. It's exciting though. The double bass part is awesome. :edmetal:

The whole "bug" thing is bizarre, to say the least. But it works decently. Does anybody else picture JLB as a hyper 14 year old girl singing that part? Seriously though, a lot of these cringeworthy lyrics are salvaged by his convincing performance.

But this song is all about the guitar work. You get not one, but two amazing guitar solos. Great Rudess solo too. The groove at the end might as well be my favorite moment on the album. The classic DT instrumental sections are way too few and far between on this album.

Not sure about the fadeout, would've liked a segue into the last song.

Voting for:

Act of Faythe - Similar to The Answer, A Better Life, and Lord Nafaryus, this does a great job at introducing a character. The "Faythe theme" is also one of the best melodies on the album. The music player bit is one of the dumbest moments on the album, but gotta give it to JLB for pulling it off convincingly. Uneven song overall though.

Brother Can You Hear Me - Very Pink Floyd-esque. The orchestrations on this are awesome BTW. So glad they used real orchestras and choirs. This is a good song but is mostly there to introduce a bunch of themes that reappear later and further the story.

Chosen - Really cool backmasked piano to start this. Some decent melodies but not as good as I remember. It drags things down quite a bit. Starting to agree with @MrKnickerbocker on this one. Will be voting for it.

The X Aspect - Some tasty piano work to start this one off. I like the organs and bagpipes, it mixes things up a little. I want to like this song just for the instrumentation, but it's a pretty unremarkable ballad.


I count 6 ballads on the first disc btw.
 
Mosh said:
A Life Left Behind - One of the major highlights of the album. The intro is a Yes ripoff but the meat of the song is excellent. One of the best choruses on the album too. This is one to promote.

Ravenskill - I agree that the album gets exhausting here, but I think it's not so much because the music is bad as much as it's all been the same sort of songs for the past hour and it's starting to overstay its welcome. I think the album would improve with a shorter first act and maybe put some of the better songs in the second act to make it less boring and story driven.
I actually think these songs work better by themselves. Ravenskill has a really great atmosphere in the beginning and some awesome melodies. Probably the most cinematic song on the album.

A Tempting Offer - The first JR solo on the whole album and it's awesome. Has a frantic feel that perfectly complements the story. This one has a slow start but once it gets going it's a great track. I love the "he'll never want again" part. Great JLB performance there. He is really the MVP on this album.
Click to expand...

A big issue I have with these tracks is that the music builds and there are shifts in vocals, and just when you think it should pick/change pace/shift anywhere, it's literally just more of the same and thus the tension does not build, it remains at the same level.

For examples:
- A Life Left Behind has this amazing, dynamic intro but then the lyrics start and it's straight mid-tempo til the end. There's a nice double bass part in the middle during the beautiful "A new sun will rise and somehow I'll find you" part and it builds and builds and then...drops right back into slowness. Ok, that's fine, but then it builds back up into a double-time chorus for literally like 10 seconds before dropping back into mid-tempo for the Arabelle-to-Daryus section. There's no change in dynamic, there's no shift in pace, so it doesn't have the dramatic effect it's striving for.
- Ravenskill has these cool dramatics and some really annoying minor-slide vocals and overall it paints a really great picture of what's happening. The heavy buildup is really cool, but then it's just another 4 minutes of mid-tempo plodding until the end.
- Then we get to A Tempting Offer (after another ballad), where the villain threatens a child...and it's cool and heavy and riffing and solos, but wait...more mid-tempo stuff for every single vocal. There's an amazing crazy carnival keyboard thing in there that I love, but then all the vocals remain at the same damn pace. It's rather infuriating. The song is built up so well, but then falls flat because every dramatic plot moment and line of dialogue remains at the same pace. It's like every song is written to be a power ballad where the character stands front of stage with a spotlight and delivers the song to the audience, regardless of the subject at hand. It sounds like it should definitely pick up right when Daryus sings, "Listen to the words I have to say..." and there's a build up and then...nothing. More mid-tempo. Then it mid-tempos to the end. Then Daryus wails about fighting for his father's pride and yet, it's still mid-tempo. This section of the song deserved a giant tempo or dynamic shift.
 
Disc 2:

Not as much to say here so I'll just comment on every track:

2285 - Just as good as the overture, if not better. Love how it reintroduces all the major themes. Nice "recap" of what's happened so far. The second disc is off to a promising start.

Moment of Betrayal - I wasn't a big fan of this song initially, but it has grown on me. It has a great chorus and is probably the most self contained song on the album. Fun stuff and starting disc 2 with something on the heavier side was a good move. Some great riffing here and an exciting instrumental section. The outro is awesome.

Heaven's Cove - Some pretty haunting melodies. The melody after the acoustic intro is very Symphony X-esque. This is another good one. The rhythms and vocal melodies give the song an uneasy feeling that works perfectly for the story.

Begin Again - This one might be my favorite ballad on the album after A Life Left Behind. Great use of one of the themes here. It has a good buildup and a great vocal melody. The Christmas outro is so out of place and awesome. It's the return of that classic quirky DT stuff. Would've liked more of that on the album.

The Path That Divides - Really intense sinister tune. Lots of chilling moments here and an incredible buildup. Another great JLB performance. The staccato vocals are back and they're ridiculous here. Are we sure that MP didn't secretly give input on some of the songs? :D Aside from that, it's an awesome song.

The Walking Shadow - Another solid tune with nice heavy riffing. Xander's one moment of dialog on the album is a pretty great moment. Love the polyrhythmic stuff toward the end, very unsettling moment. This is an example of a song that perfectly advances the story and is really enjoyable in that context, but I'm never going to listen to it otherwise. I won't vote for it yet, but I probably will eventually.

My Last Farewell - This is where the album starts to lose it for me. It's starting to sound bloated and a bit too focused on the story for my tastes. This one isn't bad but it starts to decline here. Some good instrumental work at least. Gabriel's scream at the end is another one of the major missteps on the album.

Losing Faythe - ...and then the awkward crying sounds that sounds more like laughing. What were they thinking here? This is basically a lesser version of When Your Time Has Come with a lot more plodding. I remember being very bored from here until Our New World when I saw this live. It gets a vote. I dig the 80s Rhodes piano sound though.

Whispers On the Wind - Same as above. It's all starting to sound very monotonous by this point.

Hymn of a Thousand Voices - Forced uplifting ballad which only serves storytelling purposes. Another vote.

Our New World - Finally back to something interesting. I have to give this one credit for getting stuck in my head constantly. Decent tune with a fun chorus and a great guitar solo. It's another attempt at a radio single but I think they actually nailed it this time. It's commercial but it's really good songwriting.

Astonishing - Brilliantly executed finale. I liken this to a curtain call during a musical. It kinda worked that way live too with the band going off stage briefly during the NOMAC bit. Each theme is reprised one last time and each character has their own final moment.

So ten ballads total. 6 on disc one and 4 on disc two. That's actually pretty reasonably proportionate I think.

Final thoughts: This really clicked with me this time. Even the second act was much better than I remembered. I'd probably still give it a 7, but that's still a pretty high rating I think. If they balanced the two acts better and maybe shaved off 20 minutes it could be an 8.

The story itself is pretty lame, but they do an OK job executing it. A lot of that is due to JLB. Most DT albums work in spite of JLB, but here he's by far the MVP. He makes a lot of these songs work. That being said, it would've been even better with multiple singers.

I wonder if the record label started to rush them a bit toward the end. A lot of this is really well thought out and meticulous, but some of it also feels rushed. They took a long time to finish this to begin with, but maybe just a few more months of work and maybe even a Bob Ezrin type producer would've helped. Like I said, good album that just barely falls short of greatness.
 
Mosh said:
The story itself is pretty lame, but they do an OK job executing it. A lot of that is due to JLB. Most DT albums work in spite of JLB, but here he's by far the MVP. He makes a lot of these songs work. That being said, it would've been even better with multiple singers.
Click to expand...

A very accurate statement.
 
Due to promoting 3 songs in this game I had to devise a new way to handle the finals, so...
39 songs have been promoted so far and 6 more should be promoted from this round so here's how the songs will line up in the finals:
All promoted songs will be ranked based on average number of votes (#1 lowest, #45 highest).
First group will be songs #26-#45. Once that group goes down to 10 songs, songs #13-#25 will join the game. Once we get to 10 songs again, songs #1-#12 will join the game.
 
I put on Awake earlier today. Then I tried to listen to the Astonishing afterwards. 5 songs in and I put Awake back on.

If we could just get rid of this whole album.. That'd be great!
 
Collin said:
I put on Awake earlier today. Then I tried to listen to the Astonishing afterwards. 5 songs in and I put Awake back on.
Click to expand...

This is how The Astonishing made me feel about all of their albums... even Systematic Chaos and Octavarium. I have to be in the mood for a Broadway musical when I listen to The Astonishing, and guess what? I'm just never in the mood for a Broadway musical.
 
So I came to my room, grabbed myself a pen, paper, and some beer, and fully committed myself to powering through this album. I made it through the first disc, but I'm just not strong enough to go on. I can't take anymore of this tonight.

I'll listen to disc 2 tomorrow, and I promise to put my votes in within the next 24 hours.

The good news is that I'm at least fully caught up with Act I, and I know for sure the songs I want promoted, and what I will for sure be voting for.
 
The Astonishing is an album that I haven't listened to very much since it was released, and for good reason. Listening to the entire thing always feels like such a chore. The biggest issue is that none of the songs really work outside of the context of the album. I have no problems listening to any of the songs from SFAM on their own, but that just isn't the case here.

With all that said, this album does have its moments. I absolutely love the beginning part of A life Left Behind, and The Gift of Music and Moment of Betrayal have both grown on me quite a bit.

I'm not going to list all the songs I voted for, but I made sure to use the maximum amount of votes. ;)

I will say that Gift of Music, Life Left Behind, and New Beginning are my top 3 songs of the first disc; Betrayal and New World are my favorites on disc 2.
 
Can you we just cut the whole album from the game? Nothing from it will ever make top ten.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top