new album is quite good. I really look forward to hearing it without the compression of these myspace uploads. The crash and splash cymbals have that horrible compression at those high-pitched tones that bugs the hell out of me.
That being said, this is really thick record. It's 72 minutes, the last 2 tracks being 10+ each. I'm not sure if it will go the way of say the new Archive album or perhaps even the new dredg album..or if it's length be it's biggest weakness.
Because on their own, each track is quite good..some even great. I suppose it's not entirely without repeated melodic sense or the tonality and writing approach being kind of similar on some tracks, but overall, I don't know if that'll hurt this as much as it being a bit of a project to get all the way through. I think depth-wise, it definitely surpasses Themata by a decent margin. But how addictive it becomes for me only time will tell.
Can the whole thing be taken-in as a larger concept? That for me, may make a difference..often when a record of this length and scale goes further for me. More people certainly are going to want to hear this, regardless.