Hologram of Baal to me represents the church "coming back to life" after a rough decade. "Anesthesia" with its opening radiotronics is like the boys in orbit and TP's drums and SK's opening lines "landing the band back on Earth," ready to reclaim their mantle among us (befitting a space-y album). If that's not too esoteric a comment! "Anesthesia", "Ricochet" and "Louisiana" form a great opening "mini-suite" in my mind.

HOB also has the typically churchy doom and gloom with "The Great Machine" and after that one great guitar and drum rocker after another coupled with the angelic "Tranquility/Buffalo" straight to the end. If not for the lovely "Glow-Worm" at the end (SK should really do a album of nothing but love songs) "Another Earth" would have been a fantastic closer (in the same vein as "Seen It Coming" with "Invisible"), sort of a "Goodnight, folks!" to the listener. Not that that's a complaint.

Obviously, I love HOB. I can't really rate P=A, HOB, or AENT after Starfish or FY; those three share the bronze (3a, 3b, 3c?).