OK.............I have now listened to The Astonishing three times , last time reading along with the story on dt.net and I must admit that it did boost the listening experience. So , as I originally surmised , if you're not prepared to get involved in the story there ain't much there in terms of individual songs. I normally wouldn't even bother , as if I don't like the music right off the bat I generally don't bother with concepts or rock operas at all. That's why I never got into SFAM as it just sounded too focused on forcibly squeezing the story into a song format and I felt it dragged down the quality of the music/songs.
Now that I'm home, I can properly take all of your review in. I didn't realize you weren't a fan of SFAM.
I totally understand the "squeezing in the story" feeling and how it can be a turn off. I don't really feel that way about Scenes, but I get it. King Diamond, I feel, can sometimes be guilty of this (Abigail II).
As I got through Disc 1, I kept thinking, well what if this was it, and how would that stack up to Scenes. The thing about Scenes is that musically it is so intense. And the moodier stuff (TSCO) hits a home run, where I think TA lacks this home run climax. Hymn Of A Thousand Voices could've done that, but I think it comes quite short.
Also, Scenes has Through Her Eyes, which is cool. But it's cool that they only go to that well once, as opposed to what seems like 10 times on TA.
I don't think TA will crack my Top 3 or so, but I still feel that while it has its warts, it's an awesome album, which I do love. It's an album that I feel like DT had to make.