The Astonishing
by Dream Theater

“The Astonishing” is a masterpiece by one of my all‑time favorite bands. A flawless progressive‑rock opera crafted by true master musicians. The amount of genius, effort, skill, and love for detail poured into this work is almost unreal. Every single second of this double album is perfectly composed, arranged, produced, performed, sung, mixed, and mastered — all 7,823 seconds of it. It’s hard to believe how much you actually get for the price of a single CD.

I didn’t love it right away. My first impression felt a bit “sweet,” at times almost like pop‑schlager. But over time I completely fell in love with this masterpiece and realized that The Astonishing contains some of Dream Theater’s most impressive compositional highlights — moments no other DT album even comes close to. It took me a couple of years and probably more then 100 listens to realize the greatness of this masterpiece.

It genuinely hurts to see critics giving this work 4, 3, or even fewer stars — especially when you consider the amount of trash out there that somehow gets 3‑ and 4‑star ratings.

My recommendation to newbies to this album: drop all expectations, listen to the album, and just keep going — even if it takes months or years. The Astonishing will reward you for it.

From teague 06/14/2020 01:29 | #253489

I remember being very excited for this album when it came out, and I was equally disappointed. This album is extremely boring and bloated. The performances are as baseline as you can get with Dream Theater (which is admittedly more impressive than most bands can pull off), the concept is just so predictable and lackluster, and the vehicles with which they try to portray this story are so weak that I can't help but fall asleep every time I listen to this album. At least it's not as bad as their previous effort. I'd steer clear of The Astonishing, even if you are a hardcore fan of these guys.

An amazing Mozart quality opera!

From sageamagoo 02/07/2017 04:53 | #185043

I listened to this album with a few prog heads when it came out. After disc one, we were all incredibly disappointed. Low quality, even by post-2010 Dream Theater standards. We decided to take a break, and a friend put on the greatest hits for Spock's Beard while we stopped to get a drink.

Wow, did that ever highlight how bad this album is. We were entranced! We ended up spending the rest of the night listening to them and never got back to The Astonishing.

Dream Theater's expiry date has long passed.

From AAL2014 07/24/2016 20:10 | #171750

One of the site's biggest Dream Theater fans here.

I can tell you even live the music from this record was disappointing and I went to the show well aware that I was getting the full record..

..Left at intermission.

From DanielNunes93 07/24/2016 18:33 | #171749

The album is not bad, but...34 songs? More than 2hours?
It is impossible not to become bored, which is a shame , the album has good times! If they had just picked the best 10/12 songs, we had here a great Dream Theater album !

The length really hurts this album, when it used to be one of the strong points of Dream Theater.
I mean, I appreciate the effort, but it's like they wanted to achieve another Scenes from a Memory, in this era of the band.
And it really makes you uncomfortable...

From awesomness425 02/04/2016 17:02 | #158673

Some pretty decent instrumentation. but this album sounds as well as lyrics get's cheesy as fuck. CRINGE!! Disc 2 Just makes it worse.

this album lacks a little bite...