This song feels like an intro to the rest of the album?...is the whole album one big epic/or threading theme?
Vocals at begining melody is untethered angel which confused me, right down to the guitar chunking on the one low chord / choice of scale for melody, but the rest of the song was much fresher. I think Labrie sounded great, he's not singing "another day" who gives a crap if he's not hitting what my wife calls "that one high note" lol. He's a story teller w a great voice. Besides everyone in dtf seems to be hoping for him to sing in range and not blow out his voice, seems like this is the intro/will be for the shows, let a guy warm up, let the music build!
There are some great JP moments, wondering if there are themes that appear throughout album and that's why people feel "disjointed" feels like 6 degrees or astonishing intro at times; either way also just opinion but i think we can mostly all admit "disjointed" is a common complaint for most people listening to any DT song w multiple parts, so let's be real it is endearing at this point or we wouldn't be listening, more is more.
Jordan playing with some interesting sounds; i dig the intro how the sound builds w JP's harmonics; also 6:50 the modulation on that note on headphones is really fun (probably will be nuts live if its loud enough), hope there are more moments like that re: the solo build in "a rite of passage" (also around 6:50) would love to see him just go nuts w the sounds. (side note when JP kicked off this section i was caught a little off guard that this type of slower solo section appeared so early on in the album - had a sort of S2N vibe for a second). Again they mixing it up and will be great in a show.
John and Mike totally holding it down as usual. I also really enjoyed the final section of the song and how upbeat it was, like the characters in the song have a fighting chance but they're also gonna go through some sh*t. Also they left in some tasty MM stuff like the hat at the end, tight but loose, "just fun" as he would probably say.
The concept of us becoming the aliens is great, would be cool if the vfttotw (sorry i never saw the answer to how we are abbreviating this title, lol) was sort of the climax of colonizing and building a new world to the point of having to leave again.
But what do I know, I thought the title the astonishing was going to be like a vaudevillian hey look how amazing these guys are the astonishing dream theater and was going to be a pure shred album where they let MM totally off the chain; but my guess was pretty wrong there (definitely didn't complain at the show in nyc though
).
For me DT just brings me back to growing up and wanting to shred guitar and getting to actually feel some real emotion other than standard cliche's through heavy music. Whatever they make will be fun and I hope we all get to see them live this year, cause I have feeling this particular set will be pretty exciting to watch.