Mohsen Seifi

After almost 13 years, we have a great album once again. The instrumentation and the artistic sides of this album were great. We basically got the quality we expected in a way that we didn't expect. Wierd and heavy songs with attractive and clean songs all together. Gavin's drums were superb. Steven's vocals were soothing, his guitar work was wery right to the point and his bass was truely different that what we were used to in the previous records. Also Richard's sound design really added a tremendous value to this album. I obviously could see their growth throw the songs in this 13 year gap due to their solo career, and the fact that this album was more collaborative than their previous albums, like The Incident which was basically more like a SW solo. The production had a high quality, the runtime was satisfactory and we had some great songs for different tastes in music. I was expecting a "Metal" album; It's wierd but in this album I got attracted to the cleaner songs than the heavier ones. My favorite songs from this album are Dignity, Of The New Day, Chimera's Wreck. I find this album more close to "Deadwing" than any other album in the PT, mostly because of no following a clear concept and being more experimental ("Walk the Plank") but mature + some similarities in some riffs. Songs like "Never Have" and "Dignity" gave me a SW solo "Hand Cannot Erase" vibe, I wouldn't be surprised if I understand that it's written somewhere in that time, and "Opethy" vibes still exist in this albun in songs like "Rats Return" and "Chimera's Wreck Ending". "Harridan" was definately PT's defining point of this album, and the song "Herd Culling" was the most PT-Signiture song in this album. It was a great move to have an instrumental song in this album. Thanks PT. What I missed when listening to this album was unified concept, Colin's basslines (and will miss his smiles on stage), and instrumental work from guest musicians (as we had in the previous recirds) like John Wesley, Theo Thravis, Mikeal Akerfeltd, Alex Lifson, Robert Fripp, Adrian Bellew etc; however it's known that there was a couple of voical guest contributors in vocal parts of the song "Dignity". I really hope that this album is more "Continuation" than "Closure" and I and my partner get a chance to participate in PT's live show. It's our dream. Indeed lastnight in my dreams PT/CC songs were playing in back of my mind ...