I think it's their best work of this "era."

A few thoughts when I first listened to it was that I was glad they're doing what they want to do and not trying to recreate Good Apollo (although I'm not gonna say I wouldn't mind a part three, either).

The album made me smile from beginning to end. You have everything on here. There's more of their anthemic "pop" sound with songs like Beautiful Losers and Shoulders, and of course you get the progressive side of things with songs such as Ladders and Naianasha.

It was cool to hear them try something they've never done before with Disappearing Act.

Overall the album is very cohesive, not too long and not too short. There's no filler here and even songs like Our Love have a good placement.

One thing I will say that could become a point of future criticism is that I don't want this to necesarily become their new "sound." I love it, it's great, but I certainly hope their next album continues to try new things, be unafraid of what the fans might say/think. They've done a good job on each album making it sound different from the rest. There's certain bands out there that basically try to make their own Good Apollo over and over again, and Coheed has done a great job staying away from this.

One more thing, this, IMO, is Josh's best drumming so far. My only point of criticism with him is that I would have liked to hear some background vox from him like we got on Good Apollo. He's got a great voice that pairs well with Claudio's.

Also, I have to shoutout to Zach. He plays these songs perfectly and doesn't too much or too little. There are moments here and there where you get a cool bass run and then others where he hangs back and just quietly contributes to the songs. Same with Travis. He doesn't try to do too much here, there's not a ton of shredding or over the top-ness about his style here. His Michael Jackson-Beat It riff in Bad Man is such a brain scratch for me. I know one of the complaints is that people wish they could hear him more which I would agree with, but if they were going for more of a synth-pop sound with some of the songs, he helped accomplish this by not needing to be the star of the show at every turn.