Listened to The Astonishing again in preparation for the Top 100 thread, and I think it holds up about as well as I remember. I think the rankings might be slightly lower than last time, but I still enjoy every song on the album. I have a few criticisms, but they're minor and don't affect my enjoyment of it much. The only lyrics I don't like is Heaven's Cove being referred to as a place where "the stars touch the sky"; I think I get what they're trying to say, but it's too vague and sounds like that could to anywhere where you can see stars in the sky. And the only other weird thing is the crying at the beginning of Losing Faythe; the female voice sounds fine, but the male voice sounds kind of goofy. I still think Whispers on the Wind should have been combined with Hymn of a Thousand Voices, it feels a little unnecessary as its own track but would've made for a great intro in HoaTV. My last complaint is that TA feels a little undercooked. I don't feel like it's unfinished, and I don't have a problem with the 34-track structure, but one, there's a couple technical oddities. The vocals during "people just don't have the time for music" on TGoM, which I don't really mind, but what distracts me a little is the end of A Tempting Offer, "Take the evening to deci- -ide". Two, I think it's clear they put a lot of time into the story, but I feel like there's some important elements that aren't mentioned at all in the album. Most notably, Nafaryus being nicknamed "Bug" is only brought up during A New Beginning once, and nowhere else throughout the album, which could've been more impactful if they'd mentioned it within the album itself. And the other thing is that Gabriel is titled "The Astonishing" because of his special gift of music, but nowhere in the album is this ever mentioned.
Other than that, great album! Every song has enjoyable moments, even the short ones like Whispers on the Wind, and I also like the Nomac tracks. I think it would've been cool to have a longer instrumental with the noise machine music, although I guess it would be weird since in context of the story, it's not really considered music compared to what Gabriel is capable of and what Faythe has on her music player. I love all the uplifting moments on this album (A Better Life, A Savior in the Square and When Your Time Has Come, Act of Faythe, Begin Again, Hymn of a Thousand Voices, and there's probably a few others). I feel like this album does a really good job of conveying emotions in the story through the music alone. A Savior in the Square ends with this feeling like time has frozen still for a moment as Gabriel notices Faythe and admires her beauty. In Ravenskill, there's the instrumental section after Faythe asks X for help, which has this dramatic, ominous sound to it, signifying the risk Faythe's taking by attempting to see Gabriel again, and showing that her doing as such is a big turning point for how the story will unfold. This is then juxtaposed by the tone becoming more pleasant-sounding as James begins singing again and X agrees to take her to Arhys. Then the music becomes more tense again when Arhys confronts her, initially unwilling to trust her. Even parts that might sound off in a standalone context make sense within a listen of the full album, like the ending of Losing Faythe. The song musically ends in an uplifting way, showing that Nafaryus is clinging onto his last possible hope, that being Gabriel's gift of music. This hope is then quickly snuffed out as in the following song, Gabriel is at his lowest point and feels like his gift is gone after his scream from earlier. Then the tone gradually grows lighter and stronger with Hymn of a Thousand Voices as the villagers come by, offering their encouragement, Gabriel finding his voice again, and singing to bring Faythe back to life. Things like this is why I say The Astonishing is only a little undercooked. There was room for more elaboration and improvement, but I think for what we got, Dream Theater still put a lot of love and effort into this album.
Topic: - " The Astonishing " - One Year -- er, SEVEN YEARS On. (Read 176159 times)
