My first reaction to this album was a positive one. Some people who didn't listen to this band started to try them with this release, but many said it was just boring. To be honest, if you didn't like Rin before this, you're probably not going to be a huge fan of them just by listening to this album. It does provide a lot more variety than their singles did, but it's mixture of Phantasmagoria and pseudo-90's-vk-melodic rock are not for everyone. 

With that being said, it is by no means a perfect album. Strong points: yes. Weak points: of course. Fore example, the first track, "Cold Sabbath," is a 3 minute long instrumental rush song...if that makes sense. Think of Mago's echoing Gregorian chants mixed with church bells and pipe organs, along with song synth and gang vocals. That's pretty much what it is for about three or so minutes. However, it is a good setup for "From the End...," just a bit too long. 

"From the End..." uses a guest female singer and continues with the church bell motif at first, but the actual song is much more Phantasmagoria based than their discography has been thus far. Take the main guitar riff for example: I would say that it could have been used in a less lame post 3rd break-up release. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a Varient Jihad 2.0 or anything: there are still a lot of elements in this song that are very "Rin," like the kind of punk element they like to do for just about everything. Thankfully, though, that weakness is covered up by a lot of strong new elements, like a gorgeous chorus melody. The vocals in most of the song are either sing-talked or gang vocaled with a ton of effects thrown on top. However, the chorus uses fantastic harmonizing and layering of several voices; in combination with a mellifluous progression, this makes for a phenomenal melody. There is a brief guitar solo-like section after the first instance of the chorus, ending with a section of almost a capella  vocals and piano in a very ethereal fashion. Overall, "From the End..." is one of Rin's strongest songs in my opinion. It mixes their attempt at being exuberant (although often misplaced) with beauty and grace: definitely a rare treat from this band.

I'll kill a lot of birds with this one stone: if you've listened to the singles of this album before listening to this CD, you can skip tracks 3, 5, 6, and 9. They're direct copy-pastas with no editing or rearranging or anything to make them sound in the slightest bit different. 

"Royal Blood" is alright. I don't hate it, nor do I love it. Kind of an up-beat song in a more generic Jrock circa 2009 fashion but with more synth orchestra parts. One of the better songs on this album, though.

Next up is "Continuation of Dream." A ton of people flipped at shit about this song because it's similar to most VK fake jazz. Truthfully, I hate vk fake jazz a whole lot more than I dislike real jazz, but there's some stuff in this song that I actually really like. First off, I don't believe that this is actually jazz so much as it is lounge or something else that probably has a name that I don't know. Why do I like this song then? 2 reasons: out of no where experimentation and the synth and piano parts sound like an ultra classy video game menu theme. Think Gran Turismo 5 and how high-style everything about that game (except the levels themselves!!!!!!) is. Suddenly, this song doesn't sound half bad. Not a favorite, but I give them props for it. 

If I recall correctly, a lot of people liked "Mind Confusion." It starts off with some pretty cool guitar riffs and a typical ~we're chill~ drum filler before morphing into a typical Rin song. Listening to it again, it sounds a lot like the songs I absolutely try my hardest to ignore by this band ("Foolish," "GASP FOR BREATH," "Freedom," etc). Nothing all that new here.

"World in Flames," however, is pretty different. It has the same aura as "Imaginary Lover," (another favorite of mine) and is on the slower side. It's the non-single ballad of the album, so I don't listen to it all that often, but listening to it as I'm writing this is kind of relaxing. It mixes layers of different vocals, both male and female, together, as well as gives Riku's voice a nice echoing effect. The church bells return, as well as audible bass. If you prefer slower songs then you'll probably dig this one. It doesn't sound like anything the name of the song would imply, but I guess that's alright.

Now for the bonus cds.

「Ashes Melodies」 is the milder of the two bonus cds, by far. Take the first track, "Replicant Blue." It starts off with Kisaki Project quality synth violin and then turns into a modern Girugamesh pop rock ballad mixed with major era Vidoll. Terrible combinations? Ehh, they're alright, but you probably don't find that description to be overly thrilling, but that's pretty much how I feel about this song. The melody is nice, as is the orchestra, and the music itself is very clean and straightforward, but it's lacking some sort of spark needed to make it sound great. I don't really have much more to say about this song, to be honest. I guess listen to it yourself and form your own opinion, but mine is that it wasn't featured on the album for a reason.

"The ins and outs" is much better than this cd's prior track. It's more inline with the music Rin has traditionally been making: regular old visual kei rock with some synth and piano thrown in. It does suffer from awkward, trying to be hard core, drumming: specifically when the vocals start, but it evens out later on. Interestingly enough, Riku's voice gets distorted and doubled to sound like a chorus of himself singing much higher than his normal range would permit, even if it does sound a bit reminiscent of  しゅ～ふるまぁ～じゅ's style of music. The guitar solo of this song starts off as an acoustic guitar one, making it a nice change from their typical obligatory guitar solo pattern. At the end of the day, "The ins and outs" is an alright song: better than "Replicant Blue," but not something I consider to be their best work.

「Paranoia Disturb」 was a much more satisfying bonus CD for me, mostly because it was "heavier," and by heavier I mean more punk-ish, if that's what you'd call it. The first song is "Fall...," the song that was supposed to be released like 6 times already. It starts off rather epically and kind of sounds a bit like something Phantasmagoria would do up until the vocals come in. From then on it sounds like a regular Rin song, particularly an early B-side. However, the chorus of this song is better than those of "Freedom" or "Sterilize": it's kind of sing-talked, but it has a very perturbed vibe to it. After the 2nd chorus there is a minor bass solo / guitar melody deterioration, then a really cool distorted mumbling session. I really like how that sounds: Riku's voice is faded and edited to sound like he's on the phone, so there's a flashback-to-when-I-was-innocent-in-this-situation feel to the music at this point. After that the song pretty much turns into a screaming fest. For a lot of this section, the guitar parts are a typical visual-kei punk riff: dun dugga da dun dugga da dun dugga da dun [x2] , etc. The rest of the song is more or less the same as the beginning parts. "Fall..." is pretty cool, but again, not the best of Rin. I do have a special liking for it, though.

The last song on 「Paranoia Disturb」 is "A. Hitlor." Yep. Before you get all up in a knot, take a look at my naziploitation article and then continue reading~ . Now that you've read it, you can sigh and look disappointed along with me. Neo Nazi themes don't really fly well unless they're pseudo (like making the symbol an X, or wearing uniforms that look ~like~ SS uniforms, but not exactly the same) , mostly because the old shock value has transformed from "WOOOWW!!!!!! SCARY!!!" to "You kind of look like an asshole." And that's the irony: there's no visual appeal at all. All of the ~imagery~ is never actually stated-- just implied. This song played out how I assumed it would: a kind of attempt at remaking D'espairsRay's "Fascism," mixed with Riku still being allowed to write lyrics.  Yep. Half-assed sort of punk, gang vocals, yelling, and spelling errors. But wait, in the song they actually spell. H-I-T-L-E-R. Ohh, well that make sense for a song called "A. Hitl****o****r." Someone should have checked their spelling, or at least made the same spelling mistake twice. All ridiculousness aside, the song isn't that bad. Nice melody and I bet it makes for a pretty nice rush song live, but I'm going to be real. They're not edgy. I've seen a lot of European people get offended about this song, so I guess you can look for where that's happened yourself if you're in need of some good lulz.

And onto the infamous "Ambient Cosmo."

This song was a live distributed released, put out to attract people to their later lives before going on hiatus. I kind of wished that it would have been a nice song like "Feeling Universe 2.0," but it wasn't. It's actually kind of like all of their songs I don't really like by them mixed together, just with more auto-tune and cooler synth. It starts off with a nice guitar riff before developing into a hyper syncopated synth rock song reminiscent of "Fall..." but with a prettier chorus. After a few listens, I was neutral on this song. I can't find the hook, but I can't find anything to outright complain about either. Sure, it's not as good as I was expecting, but it's not as bad I had hoped it would have been on the chance that I didn't like it. I'd also like to point out how gorgeous the cover art is though. Love that photoshoping!