✦✦✧✧ This album is a challenge to listen to, in part due to its ridiculously brickwalled mix. Too bad, as ABR have managed to imbue more emotion into their music, without sacrificing their by-now trademark experimental brand of metalcore. But my ears! My ears!!

✦✦✦✧ Another ABR record means that it’s time to see how far the band can experimentally lean out of their metalcore envelope and still deliver the goods. The good news is that the band still make threading that needle seem effortless and inevitable. The bad news is that some of the material here does feel a little unemotive and basic, even by metalcore standards.

✦✦✦✧ ABR continues their epic quest to find new territory without spooking the metalcore natives. It shreds, it surprises, it’s full of energy. How they manage to make a progressive metalcore album is a kind of magic. This album should satisfy pretty much everyone who can be compelled to give it a listen, except for those who doggedly just want more of the same.

★★★☆ ABR manage to walk a tightwire act of opening up their sound and adding experimental elements to their sound, while still being recognizably metalcore. At first blush, I can hear borrowings from near (KSE, AILD) and far (The Mars Volta, BTBAM), but even at their riskiest the band never stray too far from The Metal, which is a good thing.

★☆☆☆ I’m giving ABR a single star for effort, but honestly: this album is a mess.