You know, I often see the same argument about the general fantasy books with magic and dragons and whatever. I mean, if you dislike the setting, then fine, alright, maybe it's not for you, but in a lot of cases isn't not about the setting at all. It could be some fantasy medieval world, it could be a sci-fi dystopian world, it could be another planet and another race entirely, it could be a realistic setting in a World War II, it could be anything - the story isn't about the world. The setting, the world are just the instruments to fledge out the story. It could be a poignant dramatic tale about the struggle of two opposite factions and how it affects people - something that often happens in the real world, hell, something that happens in some countries right now - despite the fact it's set in some future with the flying orbs that play weird noise music. You make it sound like "pure fantasy world fiction" can't be relevant to many many people around the world.
Of course, it could be a total cheese-fest, but I don't know how you can discard an important aspect of the album released by one of your favourite bands just after you found out about the setting. I'll avoid judging the story before I've heard the full story.
And yeah, SFAM is indeed a classic concept album for many of people here, but for me it's definitely not because "it dealt with a subject that was very real world". For what it's worth, all the SFAM very "real world" was just a setting too, and the story wasn't exactly about that.