Bjorn Stiggson's new band (well, not really new as this is XT's third album). This is a straight down the line metal album, full of heavy crunchin' guitar riffs but with plenty of polished vocal harmonies. A couple of songs have a Metallica feel to them and "I Want Love" and "XT-Land" are high energy, full-tilt rockers that should go down a storm live. Lyrics cover a wide range of subjects from drugs ("Kids On The Hill") to runaways and abuse ("On The Run") to backsliding and restoration ("Can't Live Without You"). The stand out track is "The Battle" with its heavy plodding guitar riff and atmospheric keyboards singing about the battle between our minds and hearts and the devil and finishes with the line "I leave my life in your hands Jesus." Sound advice if you ask me.This is a straight down the line hard rock metal album, full of heavy crunchin guitar riffs and with plenty of polished vocal harmonies! ...in closing, if you like a little tamer commercial sound in your hard rock/AOR, the first is a must and will probably score a 7 or 8 out of 10 with most. Real hard rockers won't like it as much, but 'Taxfree' and 'Extended..' are different stories! These should place the same marks with ALL rock music fans (especially 'Taxfree' IMO). Cheers:)!(http://robertigno.webs.com/) As you Can cross our Radiostation(http://christianrockzone.listen2myradio.com/.Bjorn Stigsson (solo, Leviticus) teams up with Sonny Larsson (stints with Jerusalem, Motherload, & Charizma) for this nice AOR release. Definitely has a Scandinavian feel. Not great but fun to listen to.Believe me, the two releases after their self-titled one are definitely hard rock! 'Taxfree' (second release) is about five notches above the first release and 'Extended Empire' (third release) adds about another five notches above that! The latter two are Bjorn and Sonny at their best!!Hard Rock? Uh ... no. Lite AOR all the way. This is one Scandinavian band which HASN'T disappointed me. They (I mean, all of 2 dudes!) have the goods when they want to. XT puts out good tunes; though, some could be longer to showcase Sonny Larsson's voice - which soars but can be too high-pitched at times. The lyrics are sometimes simplistic & silly.