As musicians, prog metallers Dream Theater have never done anything by half, and so here they are again doing the double. Album that is.
Dream Theater being Dream Theater, of course, this is no 'ordinary' double album. Instead, it's a 34-track ('Did you hear that?'), two-act ('I thought I heard something snap..'), two-hour concept record ('Look out! It's giving way!') set in a "retro-futurist, post-apocalyptic dystopia ruled by medieval style futurism". Ah, that one.
Now, park the snootiness before pressing the play button because while The Astonishing makes Iron Maiden's recent 92-minute double The Book of Souls look like a Ramones record, it's great fun, refreshingly bonkers and filled with the risk-taking that's missing in so much of today's vanilla music. Mental elbow grease is required, and the quintet wouldn't have it any other way.
Mad skills, muscle and tenderness; meditations on life, death, freedom and love; bagpipes, choirs, ragtime piano, singer James LaBrie channelling his inner George Michael and even a nod to trad - on Dream Theater's just-opened Camino do Santiago it's all about finding the right pace. Charge through start-to-finish, hang around to marvel at different stuff along the way or pick a point and amble off for a bit?
Whatever works, basically, but set off knowing that some of the very best bits are at the very end. By which time the desire to think, listen and read a bit more is far stronger than it was at that first step.
It'll probably take until January 1 to make sense of half of it. You decide the year.
Harry Guerin
