Review by Adam M on May 6, 2026.

This is a great album that showed the band peaking and being at the top of the progressive music mountain.  This is an epic and wonderful recording that is dynamic and streamlined.  The songs here are interesting in sound.  There is a great deal of interesting performances to be found.  The mood created is surreal and compelling.

The musicianship is quite stunning with good production values.  This leads to a sound that is altogether interesting and valuable.  The guitars are powerful and have a great deal of presence to them.  There is a feeling that the band could streamline their sound a bit more, however, and this would be done in the future.

The flaw to the recording is that it is not as refined as some of their other work and this leads it to having a somewhat generic sound.  There is a feeling that the music is sometimes too experimental and could be further constricted and this is seen on Affinity.  There is hardly anything that is overly splendid to be found.

The oveall feeling I am having with this album is that it is one of the premier progressive metal releases.  There is a good deal of interest built up with the music and it is very thoughtful and promising for the future.  Fans of the band’s other album will find a lot to like here.

Rating: 7.6 out of 10