Overall, this is a great album with enough wonderful moments to justify a place in the collections of Asia, Yes and melodic rock fans everywhere. To its credit, Downes and Howe flex their musical muscles to great effect - Howe especially for the first time since the debut album despite only picking up three writing credits here.

The album's highlights include 'Never Again', one of Asia's greatest songs in any incarnation of the band combining the very best musical standards that they have long held. 'Alibis' is a real Eighties throwback but melodically to die for and a brilliant, though quirky, outro. The 'Parallel Worlds' trilogy is also very strong and varied, with a 'Rendezvous 6:02' feel seguing into an excellent Downes piece and rounded off with some haunting guitar-led prog that has shades of 70's Genesis. Howe's 'Wish I'd Known All Along' and Asia's cover of 'Orchard of Mines' also come across well, the latter highlighting just how great Wetton's voice is again.

The downside of the album is those tracks penned by Wetton and Downes that are moulded on the AOR-soft rock of their 'Icon' albums. Despite being galvanised by Howe's contributions they simply don't feel like Asia - and of 12 tracks, 5 fall within this scope. Accepting the superb 'An Extraordinary Life', reminiscent of the best of Wetton's solo career, the others are too alike to each other and to tracks on the 'Icon' albums.
That said, the album does clock in at 65 minutes, so it's not an enormous deficit. Also, it's much more varied (Icon stuff aside) than I expected and Asia haven't simply tried to recreate that sound of '82. All in all, a really creditable effort but if it was hoped that the decision to leave John Payne back in the office would be vindicated then it should be borne in mind that this is better than 'Silent Nation' it's not the measure of 2001's excellent 'Aura', which I would recommend to newcomers to Asia over this.