What Astonishing songs are among the best DT songs?

[Trav]

There are a lot of songs on The Astonishing that I like, and I love the album as a whole. However, I really only think that couple of its songs, on their own, stand up with the band's best. Those two songs would be Moment Of Betrayal and Our New World. What do you guys think? What songs on The Astonishing stand among the greatest of DT's catalogue, if any?

[TAC]

If I only had four minutes to explain DT to someone, I'd simply play the TGOM.

[MirrorMask]

There are a lot of songs on The Astonishing that I like, and I love the album as a whole. However, I really only think that couple of its songs, on their own, stand up with the band's best. Those two songs would be Moment Of Betrayal and Our New World. What do you guys think? What songs on The Astonishing stand among the greatest of DT's catalogue, if any?

A Better Life

When your Time Has Come

Ravenskill

[Trav]

If I only had four minutes to explain DT to someone, I'd simply play the TGOM.

I think that's a great song, but that surprises me. Cool, though!

[Setlist Scotty]

I went with:
Descent of the Nomacs
The Hovering Sojourn
Digital Discord
Machine Chatter
Power Down




Actually, that's an interesting question. Had to go back and give the songs a quick listen to refresh my memory since it's been forever since I last listened to the album.

Here's what I would put on my list:
Dystopian Overture
A New Beginning
Moment of Betrayal
Heaven's Cove

Honorable mention to:
The Gift of Music
Lord Nafaryus
Three Days
The Path That Divides

[Trav]

I'm glad to see the love for Heaven's Cove. I think that song is really underrated.  I was disappointed that they chose to cut it on the last leg of the tour. 

[Evai]

Whichever is the one that does the reprisal of Road To Revolution and goes into a cool instrumental thing. I forgets

[The Presence of Frenemies]

Three Days.

[Lonk]

New beginning
The Path that divides
The Gift of Music

Honorable mention:

Heavens cove
A savior in the square
The X aspect (underrated in my opinion)

[erwinrafael]

Our New World is my fourth favorite Dream Theater song.

[Sebastián Pratesi]

Whichever is the one that does the reprisal of Road To Revolution and goes into a cool instrumental thing. I forgets

The ones which reprise the "road to revolution" lyrics/melody (first heard in "Brother, can you hear me?") are:

• "The road to revolution".
• "2285 entr'acte".
• "Astonishing".

The only one where the reprise is followed by an instrumental thing is "2285 entr'acte" (which is completely instrumental anyway). Maybe that's the one you were thinking about?

[Mladen]

The Gift of music
Three days
Ravenskill
A New Beggining
The Path that divides

[Indiscipline]

Not copping out, but the whole disk 1, really.

[SeRoX]

Ravenskill for me.

[Another_Won]

Here are the best ones for me.

Three Days
Ravenskill
A New Beginning (the 2nd half ending of the song)

including these songs as sets...

2285 Entr'acte
Moment of Betrayal
Heaven's Cove

Descent of the NOMACS
Dystopian Overture
The Gift of Music

The Walking Shadow
My Last Farewell

It ends up being 46 minutes.  I could add a few more "just good" songs and make a great album.  That is one of the things I like about TA.

[Architeuthis]

TGOM
Ravenskill
Chosen
Moment of Betrayal

Too many to choose from, but those are the first ones that came to mind.

[devieira73]

If I only had four minutes to explain DT to someone, I'd simply play the TGOM.

Totally that! And it's one of most perfect singles by DT, because of that.
Great song, but to me A New Begginning has to be in any "Best of DT" selection of songs

[Chino]

I think Chosen is in DT's top 5 across their entire career.

A Hymn of a Thousand Voices is awesome as well.

[Trav]

Listening to the album again this morning I think Chosen and A New Beginning can be put up there along the classics.

[devieira73]

I agree, Chosen is truly great, no doubt! It has a 80's ballad/pop rock feel to it, very rare in a DT song and it was made in a very inspired and convincing way.

[w_marano]

A better life
Ravenskill
The X Aspect
A new beginning
The road to revolution
The path that devides

[ChuckSteak]

Among the best DT songs? Not a single one for me.

[Destiny Of Chaos]

Among the best DT songs? Not a single one for me.

This is where I'm finding myself. I really like the album, but I can't see any of the individual songs cracking my all-time top 20. I'll have to do a re-ranking some time to see where they land.

[pg1067]

Among the best DT songs? Not a single one for me.

Ditto this.  I've written before that I don't feel I've given the album as a whole a fair shake, but I haven't heard anything that would make me think that I'll regard any of the songs on TA on the same level as songs like Metropolis, Home, ACoS, etc.

[thunderdog10]

I am surprised A Life Left Behind has not been mentioned, my favorite along
A New Beginning
Our New World
Three Days
My Last Farewell

[T-ski]

Among the best DT songs? Not a single one for me.

this is correct.

[RoeDent]

All 34 of them can certainly be placed among the top 145 DT songs.

Shame this is yet another opportunity to give Astonishing haters a voice.

[Elite]

There's some musically brilliant stuff on the album that's surprisingly well performed as well. It's a shame that a lot of it is so different from DT's other albums to really accurately rank them. My favourites are A Better Life, Three Days & Ravenskill, but honestly this answer sums it up for me:

Not copping out, but the whole disk 1, really.

Disc 1 is so much better than disc 2, it's not even funny. The album would have been better if it were shorter, to me at least, and the ending of A New Beginning is kind of lame, but disc 1 is a pleasurable listen throughout. Cut out the NOMAC tracks and you have an album's worth of good to exceptional material.

Speaking of the NOMAC tracks; I still believe it's a missed opportunity to have done something amazing with the machine noises and I'm sure DT could have built a track around that where they took some influence from electronic music. Now they're just .. there .. without adding anything to the overall experience (with the exception of the very first track). In fact, to me they kind of halt the actual music on the album, which I think is a shame.

[Indiscipline]

Now they're just .. there .. without adding anything to the overall experience (with the exception of the very first track). In fact, to me they kind of halt the actual music on the album, which I think is a shame.

You've raised a pretty interesting point.

What if they're intentionally there for that exact purpose? To give us a small taste of that same frustrating desire for music - inevitably and mercilessly interrupted by the machines - experienced by the characters we're following. Musical theatre works that way, after all.

When I see them that way (and as blatant change of scenery/mood tunes), the NOMACS tracks add a lot to my overall experience.

[TheOutlawXanadu]

I don't think that any Astonishing songs are top-twenty material, but that is only because the band's top twenty is godlike. I would slot ""A New Beginning" and "Our New World" just below that threshold, with a few other tracks making the cut as well.

[krands85]

Well it depends what you mean by 'best' - top 10? Top 20? One thing I love about the band is that they always seem to be able to pull out at least one absolute classic song per album, even this far into their career. My top 10 happens to include one song from every album between Train of Thought and DT12. So since I became a fan, each album always had at least one standout, which is pretty unique among the bands I listen to that have lots of albums.

That run was always going to end at some point, and it happened with The Astonishing. However, I still really enjoy the album and think there are a lot of good songs and great ideas on it. Since DT has so much incredible music, I could easily define top 25 or even top 30 as being 'among their best' - in which case a few Astonishing songs would qualify.

A New Beginning - my favourite from the album and it would probably just about squeeze into the top 20
The Gift of Music - I tend to prefer the longer songs, but I love this one - easily my favourite 'short' song that they've ever done
Three Days - Another one of my favourite short DT songs, really cool little track
Moment of Betrayal - Not much to say about this one, just a good, solid song
The Path That Divides - One of the best tracks on the album, it might sneak into my top 25. It also kicks off probably my favourite 3-track run on the album
My Last Farewell - Not sure if I'm including this on not just the strength of itself, but also how it fits together with the 2 preceding tracks, but I do really like it (I was going to include The Walking Shadow too, but it maybe doesn't quite make it as a standalone song)

[The Walrus]

I can say without hesitation that Three Days is among the best of DT's best.

[Lonk]

I gave the album a try again after not listening to it as a whole in over a year. And a few things stood out:

1) the solo for A new beginning is not as great as I remembered. It's good, not great.
2) Ravenskill is a good song, but overhyped in my opinion.
3) Brother can you Hear me is still hard to listen to
4)the keyboard and guitar work on this album is really good(overall)
5) there are really good and powerful vocals on this album. Specially act of fayth, x Aspect and begin again

[425]

I guess it depends on how selective a group "among the best" is.

If it's something on the order of Top 20... probably none of them. But the Top 20 is a pretty elite group, and I don't think the strength of an album lies solely in the extraordinary strength of its strongest songs. I think The Astonishing is a good album, but I don't see a song on there that, on its own, has the wow factor of DT's Top 20.

If we're talking more like Top 50, that's a much less selective group, and I can think of a few Astonishing songs that would have a pretty solid shot at that: Dystopian Overture, The Gift of Music, Chosen, The X Aspect and Moment of Betrayal.

[ChuckSteak]

All 34 of them can certainly be placed among the top 145 DT songs.

Shame this is yet another opportunity to give Astonishing haters a voice.

So you are saying that if people "hate" the album they should shut up and shouldn't express that? Only people who love the album can participate, yay! Way to go!

Do you think it would be all right if the majority of people hated the album and they said "shame this is yet another opportunity to give Astonishing lovers a voice"? What a group mentality. Let people like or dislike whatever they want. It is their taste.

And if you didn't read, there are actually a couple of people here who like the album but still don't consider the songs in it among the best DT has ever done. Oh my god! We should sue them for that!!