I think it's one of DT's best albums, however it's so different from two other best (I&W and SFAM) that it's not correct to compare and choose only one best album.
I am not native english speaker, so I cannot tell anything about lyrics, all foreign songs sound like instrumentals to me
But as for music, I think that the way harmonies and melodies work on Awake was never repeated by DT neither before nor after. It is not technical music that shows off skills, but it's sort of like Schubert's Ave Maria - simple, not technical at all, but when you pay attention to all the harmonies in that song, you just get crazy because it seems impossible to come up with such simple, and yet such genius song. And the same kind of thing is going on in Awake, when I listen to it, I just cannot believe how every little detail melodically sounds almost trivial, yet absolutely beautiful and creative, and very different from what you'd expect from standard prog/metal cliches.