It’s a bit strange to go from the freakishly good and confusing Sean Taggart cover art of their first LP to … this, which is an insert photo at best, but here we are. This record is just not as good as Life of Dreams, though I see some ambition here - it sounds more technical, with some Voivod-influence on this one; musically it may be more proficient with technically impressive solos and even a piano introduction. There’s dive-bombs, blurringly fast parts, ploddingly slow parts, mid-song pace changes, crunchy guitars, gang vocals… on paper, this is a great record with all the boxes ticked. But the mix is flat, and the hints of repetition from Life of Dreams are hard to ignore on this album - the fact that the songs are sometimes 2x as long as the previous record doesn’t help (note that there are only 9 songs on this record). In a way, this record draws parallels to Megadeth: never able to achieve the greatness of Metallica, despite being technically a more talented band. A decent record but somewhat destined to obscurity, I don’t think this could ever be anyone’s favorite crossover, thrash, speed or hardcore album.