Went into this with an open mind based on The Sin and the Sentence but left underwhelmed. I can get on board with generic and derivative music so long as it's performed well, which this is, but something that immediately dissuades me is the formulaic pop structure of a song, something that appears all too often throughout this album. There are engaging moments that get stopped abruptly before they're allowed to breathe and explore in any meaningful amount in favor of detouring back to a simplistic, forcibly catchy chorus. I didn't find it terrible, surprisingly, but I didn't find it great, unsurprisingly.

Trivium has the ability to write some good melodic chorus that make their songs easily listenable. However the latter part of the album is somewhat a letdown.

Not as good as TSATS or ITCOTD, but this one has some bangers on it. "Catastrophist," "Among the Shadows and the Stones," and "Bending the Arc to Fear" are some of their best.