No Decoder

While it's clear that Lang is an incredibly talented musician, I don't think he uses his skills to their advantage on this album. This project starts off with an impressive instrumental track, followed by a 9 minute long song that goes on for about 4 minutes too long. A lot of this album fell into the background as I was listening to it. Also, I don't really care for the lyrics to many of the songs on this album, and Lang's performance leaves a lot to be desired. The album explores a lot of interesting ideas and themes, but executes them poorly, for example, Lang gives his view on the world on the track "Our Modern World", and while this song has some powerful lyrics about what the older generations are doing to the younger generations, the generic and formulaic sound of it, mixed with Lang's subpar performance, leave it as one of my least favourite on the entire project. Also, I felt like this album exhausted everything it could do in the first 4/5 songs, and then went on for another 40 minutes, this leaves many songs, especially in the latter half of the album, and to an extant, the entire project, feeling bloated and unnecessary. From a technical standpoint, this album is impressive, but I don't think this translates into an enjoyable listening experience, nor one I have any desire to return to.