The newest offering from the Winds Of Plague entitled "The Great Stone War," up brings an arrangement of surprises one being a well-balanced blend of previous works with novel noted details that make this album take a giant leap right into the guide lines of the follow-up later on down the line. "The Great Stone War," is your average concept based album telling a narrative storyline of various characters going through their situations leading up to apocalyptic battles when the Earth is in danger. But with keeping to the concept matter here, this album sticks to the traditional formula having a spoken intro and outro that brings the album that much closer or shorter.

No doubt about that musically speaking this album is an improvement even though their previous works "Decimate the Weak" as a much more powerful reputation establishing a boundary force field to fight off anyone else who dare enter their domain. But that was then and this is now and as of right now you get tossed with 11-tracks of absolute power of numerous breakdowns, each one sounding alike through each of the tunes played out, whereas a few keyboarding structures are pointed out every now and then really doesn't allow enough for the growls and screams that Winds Of Plague were once able to produce. Indeed you can pin-point certain growls and screaming aspects within the album’s process but the breakdowns tend to pop up a bit more often.

Some of the songs that tend to have this effect includes “Battle Scars," "Our Requiem," and the title track delivering more of a lyrical battle for good and bad, allowing the singing proportions to sound slightly cheesy at times, Clever lyrics are found quite often, but the narrative styles tend to not be repetitive for telling the story in a fashion using the "big" words like “ineluctable”, “vestals”, and “mammoths” - making it be more like a lecture lesson than a song. Musically goes again the breakdowns do tend to take up most of the album but the drumming had its share of bad vibrations as well, but detracting from the album overall. Sounding essentially the same within each song and the double-bass takes away from the changes of pace happening in between, overall this performance is not aligned with the other instruments. Overall this album is an improvement but comes with its disappointments found scattered everywhere you look not really being that much of anything in the long run.