Dream Theater: The Astonishing CD and 24/96

[j20056]

I realize most on this forum are not into so-called "prog metal" which DT epitomizes. I became a DT fan mostly because of their more spacey, Floyd-ish music, which usually is found in sections of their epic albums. The metal and fast sections are not for everyone, which brings me to this new album.

It is a powerful and ambitious double album with more than 2 hours of sublime music which is much more based on piano, vocals and of course the grand master John Petrucci on guitar. The album is actually a bona-fide rock opera with characters and a story behind it. I would say more than 2/3 of the album are beautiful ballads and can be thought of as a modern version of what The Wall could have sounded like if done in 2016.

I have listened to both the CD format and the 24/96 HDTracks download, and without doing any measurements, the 24/96 sounds even better than the CD, more space, more 3D.

As I said, probably not for too many people of this forum, although the album includes a full fledged classical orchestra for certain sections, so classical music meets Pink Floyd meets Metallica in a very tasty combination.

[tobeover]

Thanks for the review. Funny some of my friends have trashed this album. Listened to a bit on Spotify and I like it.

[j20056]

Well, the hard core Dream Theater fan base is really into shredding and metal, fast double kick drum and heavy riffing and so on. So on the DT forums, many are indeed trashing the album because it is much softer, although many are also loving the album. This really works for me because I like the softer side of DT way more, and I really hate machine-gun type double kick, although I don't mind heavy riffing.