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I was expecting this to be more blatantly proggy, but this is an album of complex yet hooky music with a lot of heaviness and a definite emphasis on the guitars rather than wallowing in keyboard excess - in fact I was pleased to see this band does not even list a key player among them. Guitarist Janne Luthje is a real star here, flashing heavy, snappy riffs that avoid showboating entirely. The rhythm section is tight and aggressive, and while I wasn't sure about singer Bjorn Asking at first, he has grown on me. He has a rough, almost glam kind of sound to his voice that I did not expect with a band who billed themselves as prog.

If there is a drawback to this, it's that a lot of the melodies and licks are just a bit too rock-ish for me - too many major chord progressions and harmonized vocals. This is a solid album of Swedish metal, but it also draws a lot on the Scandinavian jones for 80's hard rock, and the result is a less killer album, to my ears, than it could have been.