I still haven't given it a proper listen through, still mostly skimming, but I think I'm going to be a bit disappointed with it, with a couple of tracks I'll come back to. I don't mind the cheese at all, because it's exactly my kind of cheese for the most part, and it's the kind of cheese this genre is about, but it's a bit soft overall, and the songwriting isn't all up to the standard of the best tracks. The vocals are pretty good, but nothing to rave about.
I don't mind the music being safe or being stock in structure, as that's basically par for the genre, and in many ways that's how I like it. But I think the album leans too heavily on the ballads. My favourite tracks are Cold Blooded (I still absolutely love this song), Risk Everything, Thee Crescendo, and The Dying of the Light. I don't mind that Cold Blooded isn't representative of the style of the whole album, but it doesn't seem to be representative of the quality either.
Take Frederiksen's last album. The single "Last Battle of My War" was by far the most rock track, and wasn't indicative of the whole album, but the rest of the album was equally strong in songwriting imo, so I loved that album. I was hoping this would be a repeat of that.
I still haven't given the album a good listen through, but those are my initial thoughts. I expect I'll roughly agree with you on this one. I must say though, the production is great, easily one of the better sounding Frontiers albums.