Musically speaking it's more of a heavier affair than you would expect from a Savatage album and a lot less theatrical. It's straight up American heavy metal nonetheless, which is not really my cup of tea to be brutally honest.

The tracks vary from slow doomy songs to mid tempo anthems with some double bass attacks and some more uptempo Megadeth/Metal Church alike sounding songs. The Metal Church comparison mostly comes from Chris' vocals, which sound a lot like ex-Metal Church (on the Hangin' In The Balance album) vocalist Mike Howe. On 4th track Erase, there's even some Nevermore riffing present, so it really is a varied album albeit a bit long. 72 minutes for an album like this is really too much for me. My attention span was really tested and upon repeated listens, I could hardly resist the urge to skip tracks.

 

As mentioned before, the theme of war is strongly present on the whole album. The lyrics sound heartfelt and it really seems that Mr. Caffery has some issues with America's foreign policy. Only when an Eastern theme is introduced in the song 'Saddamize' it all starts to sound a bit too cliché. It almost sounds like a gimmick and doesn't really add up. 

But it still gets worse...Chris Caffery thought it was wise to perform a cover of Amazing Graze, accompanied by piano and sounds of bombs and guns as a backdrop, which is probably meant as an emotional homage to all the soldiers in war, but ends up as a fony sounding tearjerker to me. But then again, patriotism hasn't been injected from birth here in Holland.

 

In short, this a solid heavy metal album for Savatage, Metal Church, Megadeth and even Sanctuary lovers, albeit with a few corny mistakes which should not been put on it. It's nothing amazing really but Chris Caffery again shows he's a decent songwriter and quite a skilled vocalist.