Floor Jansen has all of a sudden became one of the top female vocalists in metal after Revamp beginning to take off and being announced as the new singer of Nightwish. Going back to the After Forever days I have always been a fan of her voice, so I was excited to see that she would be on the album. “Design the Century”, which was the first single on the album, is kind of a repetitive song with a lot of choir vocals. It’s meant to sound intense, but at times misses the mark. Once again it has a very competent solo and Floor's voice is still really solid, but honestly I am not the biggest fan of this track.
The fourth track is where I start to get concerned, yet another song about Nazis called “Rise of the 4th Reich”. I'm not really sure why Tolkki has decided to touch on a few concepts that he has already expressed, but to any long time Stratovarius fans a lack of ideas begins to become pretty apparent. I do have to hand it to him though for keeping all of the guitar solos fresh. The guitar in this track is incredible, although the verses and choruses aren't much to write home about. My biggest complaint about this track is probably that I've never been a huge Virgin Steele fan or of David Defeis's voice. I understand why he chose him considering virtually everyone I know loves his voice, but it just never caught on for me personally.
“Stargate Atlantis” is definitely the highest point of the album thus far. Fabio's voice once again sounds incredible and it starts off sounding like Stratovarius's Hunting High and Low. It is a very memorable and happy sounding track, especially for being on an album that is supposed to be about the Apocalypse. As to be expected the guitar solo once again is full of emotion and technical ability, and although the song resembles something Stratovarius might do it is still a somewhat original idea, which I have to hand it to Tolkki. It also leaves me to wonder why more of the songs on the album aren't like this.
Keeping with the metal opera theme “The Paradise Lost” starts off with a lot of orchestration and keyboards. It actually has a pretty good build up until it gets to the vocals. Honestly I cannot really tell who is supposed to be singing. It’s one of the four female vocalists on the album, but personally to me they all sound very similar. My best guess would be Simone Simons, but honestly without the disc sitting in front of me I wouldn't be sure. Up to this point this would be my biggest complaint on the album is the addition of far too many indistinguishable female vocalists. This track once again attempts to recycle a few older Stratovarius riffs and for the first time on the album actually has a short and uninteresting solo. The chorus is also extremely repetitive almost to the point of making me want to skip the song.
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