(photo: Frank Hoensch/Getty Images)

Over the past 30 years, Dream Theater have repeatedly reached for the cosmos with the attitude that if they can’t touch stars, at least they can stretch their musical and conceptual abilities and create some pretty mind-bending music.

The approach has yielded 13 albums that have varied in complexity and approach, but always delivered lofty, cerebral songs that have reflected the band’s many influences, including Rush, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, and the Moody Blues. And during its tenure, Dream Theater has developed into one of the leading lights in the prog/metal genre, earning a strong, loyal following and winning numerous music magazine awards.

“The thing about Dream Theater is we’ve never had real mass commercial success, so from the beginning we relied on doing creatively what came naturally to us and what was in our hearts and minds,” says guitarist and main songwriter John Petrucci. “And then we took it on the road and presented it to people live with the knowledge that playing shows would help us continue to grow and be successful.”

Right now, Dream Theater are in the middle of a European tour for their most ambitious release to date, The Astonishing, a two-hour-plus, double-disc rock opera. The album, which combines tales of medieval feudalism with post-apocalyptic sci-fi, debuted at #11 on Billboard’s album chart and #1 on the Rock Albums chart. When Dream Theater return to North America, starting April 14 in Quebec City, the band will play The Astonishing in its entirety, only without the live choir and orchestra parts that color the record.

“I think doing something where there are extra players, people, and characters onstage is best left for a dramatic interpretation of the story,” Petrucci says. “For now, this is a Dream Theater concert. We didn’t want to turn it into some kind of circus.”

To Petrucci, music is too sacred for it to become a circus. That’s part of the reason why he raised the bar for The Astonishing. It’s not Dream Theater’s first concept album – that came in 1999 with Metropolis Pt 2: Scenes From a Memory – but it’s the group’s longest, most multifaceted project to date, and one which began long before the band started working on the music.

“We said, ‘Well, let’s not just get together and hash this out in a room.’” Petrucci explains. “I knew I had to write a story first so we’d have the ideas to work with. That was about two and a half years ago. The idea was to think bigger than just an album and give people who have listened to Dream Theater for many, many years something new to sink their teeth into and get excited about.”

Instead of making yet another story of dystopian futureshock – something that’s all the rage in an era of young adult fiction, includingThe Maze Runner and Divergent – Petrucci decided to incorporate elements from the past with a post-apocalyptic slant. “I’m a big fan of Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings, but at the same time I love Star Wars and Hunger Games,” Petrucci says. “I really like the idea that even though we’ve moved into the future in the story, the world took many steps back and society broke down.”

At the center of Petrucci’s story featuring abusive overlords, feuding families, and hovering noise robots is a theme about the redemptive power of music. Like Rush’s 2112, The Astonishing takes place a society that has banned music and lost its humanity in the process.

“It was important to me that the central theme revolved around music, because music is such an important force in my life,” Petrucci says. “It started out with me thinking about how a lot of jobs today are being taken over by machines and robots and automation. So I wondered, ‘What would happen if the arts were taken over by machines?’ The only music that’s created in the story is made up by these things called Nomacs, or noise machines. And in this future there’s a major void, because people don’t make music a part of their daily lives. So it’s up to this savior named Gabriel, who’s born with the gift of music to try to turn the world back around.”

For the most part, The Astonishing is an epic, escapist journey that takes Dream Theater’s music into new realms of exploration, both musically and lyrically. On another level, however, Petrucci sees it as a warning of what could happen if society keeps taking music for granted. Not only does he feel music is undervalued and treated like something to trade and discard, he’s concerned that people seem to lack the attention spans to listen full albums, let alone full-fledged double-disc concept records.