Concept albums are always something else...you have to get into the story to `understand` the music. This album by Circle Of Pain looks very promising with beautiful artwork that breathes a dark and tragic athmosphere. But with 19 songs clocking in at almost 74 minutes this is a tough cookie to eat. The story of Patrick and his search for harmony and companionship with a tragic suicide is just to stretched to deserve the credit that it probably would have got when the material was say 20 minutes shorter. Prologued by a narrative piece the album begins impressive; `Try` is a melodic rocker and in the chorus parts even reminds me of `Big City Nights` by Scorpions. The good standard is preserved for two songs more, `All The Time` and `The Way` are also good songs and `Imagine` is a nice piano ballad with female vocals (by who?) but after that mediocrisy sets in and the attention to the story hopelessly fades away by each track that comes by, it is downhill from there.

It is also very strange to hear pretty melodic Metal with these kind of lyrics (which are in dictionary-English), they don`t mix somehow. Take a look a the cover, I`m sure a lot of people will expect a Gothic Metal sound. There`s no cohesis unfortunately and this brings down my judgement. There certainly is talent in this band, I`m very sure, but they shouldn`t overdo things...