Ahhhh-yeah! Mike Lee returns to the world of metal with thunderous music to back him up. This album is incredible. I doubt anyone in this genre will pass this one up. I have a feeling that Enigma's gonna push this and it will get the world's attention. The music will surely stand up to the scrutiny of the critics. "Imaginary Music" gets the album rolling with a good rhythm and a massive drum sound. Both Steve Whitaker and Jim LaVerde put in a stellar performance for the rhythm section on Atomic Arena. Jim especially stands out in almost every song, with riffs that shake. Special thanks need to go here to John and Dino Elefante for a fantastic production job. The lyrics here talk about the phoney, temporal prestige of being a rock star. "Killers of the Unborn" has a real quick rhythm that delivers this pro-life statement very powerfully. Lyrically, it chronicles the fate of over 4,000 unborn babies per day in the U.S. alone. Later on it also confronts the emptiness of the female who killed her baby. It lets her know that there is forgiveness in the Savior. The song ends with a real cool drum roll that's mixed from channel to channel as it fades and Mike screams as if he's being killed. "In the Eye of the Fire" is a stormer of a song. It has the best bass riffs on the album. You can almost see the strings bending and vibrating. "Terrorist Child" has a small lead break that's pretty hot, although used to accent rather than dominate. Dominate. That's the word for Barren Cross and their music. It just dominates. "Close to the Edge" is another powerful rocker with a polished sound. The lyrics are bold and well-written. "Dead Lock" is remixed from the California Metal album, which is done a little faster and has a few minor changes in the lyrics. Instead of "cold steel, the pipe's never cold," it's "hot steel..." There's some echo and ad-lib vocal tracks added also. I think I like the Cal Metal version better, except for the lead break here. "Cultic Regime" comes next, starting with a laughing Hyena intro (portraying a crazed cultist, I guess). "My God raised up from the dead/ Is yours in bed?" The lyrics here are totally straight-forward. We need to have the boldness to speak like this to the cultists that come to our door, only with love and less volume: "If you don't believe Jesus is God/ My God made yours, that's all." "Heaven or Nothing" is a metal ballad done well. Written by John and Dino Elefante, this love song acknowledges God and has pictures of heaven (streets made of gold and castles in the sky). I bet they do a video of this song and boy, I hope it goes to the top. I don't know if a lot of the conservative adult contemporary stations will play it, 'cause Mike's vocals are very much those of a metal screamer. "King of Kings" is a worship anthem. It's got a killer message and sound, plus it has that extra dimension of worship that affects our spirits in a different way. You can kind of tell Steve Whitaker wrote it, because there's some real emotional, ballad-type drumming during some of the worshipful verses. "Living Dead" ends the album with a call to break out of the state of spiritual death. This album may be one of the tools that God uses to reap a great big harvest out of the world's metalheads.