Estimated reading time: 2 minute(s)

★★★★ This is a challenging album, for both band and audience. This is still very recognizably BTBAM, but the music here also expands on the band’s bailiwick in virtually every direction. Indeed, in addition to sly tips of the hat to the band’s previous best works, there are also noticeable borrowings from many other prog metal standard bearers — Opeth, Dream Theater, Porcupine Tree, and Leprous leap immediately to mind — as well as a healthy reverence to classic rock, power metal, and musical theater at large. This is the prog album to beat in 2015, plain and (not so) simple.

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