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Ah, it's bands like this that make me glad I share a country with them. First things first: yeah these guys are Christian. Granted, the only place you get that is the lyrics, which are fortunately the only kind of passable Christian lyrics, those that tell a story using Biblical themes instead of shoving the religion down your throat. Rarely if ever do they get into Jesus-fallatio mode, which is definitely for the best, as I wouldn't want that distracting from the awesome music at hand here.

These guys play a super-hyper melody-driven style of power metal that has more crunch than a Pringles factory, and more riffs than you can imagine. Seriously, the riffs and vocals are just amazing here. Special mention goes to Matt Smith, who is one of the best power metal singers out there today. This guy can hold glass-shattering notes for lung-collapsing amounts of time, and almost never seems to stop belting out awesome and catchy vocal lines. I'm not kidding when I tell you that at least three of these choruses will be stuck with you forever after first listen. The riffs switch constantly between clean melodies (There's actually a flamenco guitar part in "Martyr" that shouldn't work at all, and is somehow awesome) and crunchy, almost thrashy, riffing, and the drums are especially cool, never falling into the boring ratatat cliché. And when you put all of those together with a few epic key parts, you get a collection of some kick-ass power metal.

What you get here is a bunch of awesome epic power metal songs that never get boring (in the songwriting department I'm actually reminded of the legendary Lost Horizon), and is always surprising. Overall, a quality release from a quality band.