Bought it today, listened to it twice.
Termination proclamation is cool.
And the Maiden Spoke is my personal favorite on the album, and maybe will become my favorite NM track ever. I've loved Fault of the Flesh a long, long time though, so, check back with me in 10 years I guess.
The Obsidian Conspiracy rocks.
The rest of the album bugs me. There's some riff-recycling going on in this album...for example, the tail section of one of the parts of the solos sounds like it came straight from TGE (really obviously, it actually jarred my listening experience)...When Moonrise started I thought they had actually redone Narcosynthesis or the bridge from TGE (take your pick)...a couple of other sections really reminded me of specific parts of other songs. This album seems to me like a cross (sort of) between Politics and DHIADW, which are actually my two least favorite NM albums. I prefer Nevermore when there is someone else there to put a different spin on the songwriting process, like Steve Smyth on TGE or Tim Calvert on DNB. Plus, there seems to be some leftover Warrel Dane/Jeff Loomis solo album ideas/themes going on in this album which didn't do this album any favors.
I really like the Enemies of Reality album, and I much prefer the Kelly Gray version over the Andy Sneap version, and I think Dreaming Neon Black is one of the greatest albums ever, slightly above TGE, so I think my tastes probably run a lot different NM-wise than many of the people on this board.
I am glad, however, that they didn't just do TGE-2. They at least tried to differentiate this album from their others, and that had to be tough to do. I actually like a lot of the ideas going on in the album (a lot of the songs go off in odd directions and I really enjoy that sort of thing) and I'm sure with some repeated listens I'll get past some of the riff-recycling. These are just my first impressions.
Excellent!
