I do think it's ridiculous the amount of hate The Astonishing gets just for being a concept album that isn't super heavy on the metal or prog or because Mike Portnoy isn't involved. Like... a lot of the hate it receives is unfair. This was just in a Facebook post, by the way. I'm not bothered at all by it. Just pointing out how I was called a fanboy for defending it literally minutes after saying I didn't think SFAM was hot shit. That's all. IDGAF how people actually conduct themselves with respect to an album but don't drag me into it when the logic you use is so black and white and elementary
EDIT: And a lot of people give TA crap for its story, but... SFAM's story is about a love triangle with a girl and two brothers and someone dies and those same people get reincarnated 70 years later. IMO it's not exactly high quality stuff.
Again, my perspective on TA is that I've not been able to get into it -- either musically or lyrically. I think I've listened to it all the way through three times, but never entirely in the same sitting. Based on that, I would describe it as fairly uninteresting. However, I don't feel like I've given the album a "fair" chance, so I've not passed any sort of "final judgment" on it and typically exclude it when ranking DT's albums, etc.
I agree that panning TA because MP wasn't involved is silly. Panning it for being a concept album while, at the same time, liking SFAM for that reason is inconsistent, but there's nothing wrong with disliking concept albums in general. It's also not unreasonable to be generally opposed to concept albums but to like SFAM and not like TA (or vice versa) for whatever reason.
As far as the stories, I don't know the TA story well enough, but I do know that it's at least a little derivative of the story in "2112," which is entirely derivative of Ayn Rand's novella
Anthem. I have no problem with the story in SFAM -- indeed, I like it a lot. However, it's well-known that it's very similar to the story in the film
Dead Again.
You can make any story sound pretty banal and stupid by boiling it down to its lowest denominator.
Romeo and Juliet: Two young emo teens marry without parental consent and then commit suicide over a misunderstanding.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: A retarded child and his father both fall for mysterious woman; father arranges to have woman killed, son kills father and son commits suicide.
Crime and Punishment: A broke college dropout kills a man because he thinks that's what "great men" do; he then confesses at the urging of a prostitute.
Etc., etc.