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It's impossible to talk about this band without talking about Sabaton, as this band is made up of four guys who all apparently left Sabaton together last year and decided to form their own band. Yes, despite the imagery of the US Civil War all over this album, this is a Swedish band that has essentially split away from Sabaton and decided to make a very similar kind of music.

Their major mistake was hiring former Lion's Share/Astral Doors/Wuthering Heights vocalist Nils Patrick Johansson to sing lead, when anyone with any experience with those bands can tell you he sounds like shit. They were going for a style similar to Sabaton's Joakim Broden, but Johansson sounds like Broden if he was sneering with a mouth full of peanuts, and his whiny, mushmouthed performance is a clear low-light of the album.

Their other mistake was thinking that replicating Sabaton's success would be easy. I mean I have certainly heard worse albums, and the riffing and songwriting is solid enough. But there are no really good riffs or songs on here, just a bunch of stuff that is a step up from standard. The recording is clear, pro, and flat, without the rampant bombast or heaviness that Sabaton wield at their best. So what you get is an album of extremely bland songs that sound like the less memorable cuts off the recent Sabaton output, and with terrible vocals on top of them. I was excited to hear what this band could do, but you can skip it, trust me.