✦✦✦✧ Meet the new and improved FGA, with a sound as epic and balls-to-the-wall as you’d expect, but now catchier than ever. More room is given to singer Veronica Bordacchini, and the songs are generally tighter, more concise, and more accessible. But the album still shreds where it wants to.

✦✦✧✧ This is a fun record to listen to. That said, whether you’re already a fan of FGA or are only hearing of their brand of orchestral tech death now for the first time, this album’s unvaried production and all-too-familiar riffage suggest that you should listen to the band’s previous album “King” instead.

✦✦✦✧ FGA take their neoclassical pretensions to ridiculous heights with this one; it says something that they were able to release a deluxe double-length edition, with soloed-orchestral versions of every song on the standard release (and it says something else that this bonus actually kinda stands up on its own, like a video game soundtrack).

★☆☆☆ There is a whole lot of bombast and fast notes and operatic epicosity on this album, but it’s so unfocused that it comes out as a blur. The second half of Labyrinth has some sweet metal moments, but by then you’re probably past all caring.