First of all, the biggest detractor is the production. In a word, it's terrible. It sucks out all the crunch of the guitars and instead makes them sound like musical pillows, strumming away softly and forcelessly; it sucks out the bass and drums and leaves them by the wayside, forcing you to search aimlessly for some lower end stuff to carry the highs; it sucks out any enjoyment one might find during choruses when all you can are the awful, muffled background chants that accompany them; but most importantly, it just sucks. The entire album is shrouded in this cold-sounding veil that it just never emerges from. Gone is the interesting dark environment of Dreamspace. Here is the cold, emotionless stream of robotic mediocrity.
I hope you like boring, melodic, powerless songs that you've heard a thousand times before by a thousand different bands, 'cause that's what you're going to get! Seriously, this is completely uninspired. The fact that people call this stuff great and later albums like Infinite weak doesn't make much sense to me, because the music, singing, and songwriting are all about the same. At least those later albums have decent production and throw in a different idea every once in a while. Fourth Dimension settles for the bare minimum 100 percent of the time, reusing riffs, choruses, and solos at will. "Hey, guys, it's been, like, two albums since we've used this rhythm. Nobody will notice! Oh wait, we can't favor one over another...Let's just copy this entire song!"
What kills a number of the decent songs are the fact that we've heard better versions of them before. The worst offenders are Against the Wind, with its Helloween carbon copy chorus, Winter, with its Dream Theater worshipping buildup, and the absolutely atrocious 030366, which is a near exact rip-off of Queensryche's Screaming In Digital. Heard enough? No? Okay! Let's go back to Against the Wind. That rhythm during the chorus? It's exactly the same as part of the instrumental Goodbye off of Fright Night. Another fun coincidence? Both of those albums suck.
I can't even comprehend this album's positive reception on any level. There's hardly a single redeeming factor here that would lead me to listening to this again. After hearing so many better albums in the same style with better production and songwriting (you know, ones that don't use the same song structure every song), it's impossible to appreciate whatever it is that we have here. I still have doubts when I manage to enjoy a song (like the only good ones, Distant Skies and Nightfall), because I can't help but wonder if I can only enjoy it because I haven't heard the song it's ripping off yet.
And, no, the vocalist change doesn't help much; if anything, Kotipelto only emphasizes the abysmal changes that have taken place here. I actually like him, but I don't think anything could save this release. I hate this, but if you're into this kind of stuff, you'll probably like it, because everyone else seems to. I guess I'm just weird. Please give Elements Pt. 1 a chance! Seriously, at least that's varied and has progressive tendencies. This is a seminar of cliched pain that just wears its listener down with overlong, boring songs that keep getting longer until the very end; and believe me, the end can't come soon enough. It makes me feel dirty just writing about such a repulsive entity. Trust me, just walk slowly away from Fourth Dimension. Having three is enough, anyway.
Overall: 2.5/10 (Abysmal - "NO NO Make it stop!")
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