Universal Nation could have been one of the most perfect trance songs ever if not for that annoying breakdown/lull in the middle....because it seemed for a brief moment that MIKE wanted to do something outside of the typical breakdown-build-anthem formula. Introduce the anthem at the beginning, and let it loop throughout. Perfect in its simplicity. But then it had to go all anthemy on us, completely killing the wonderful momentum that the melody provided, that kind of "rolling" effect that actually prompts you to yearn for it to keep going, even though it's just a simple 3-key, four-bar loop. I haven't heard such a repetitively addictive synthline since What Time is Love. I could listen to it for hours and not get sick of it.

If I was in charge of the track, I'd remove the breakdown entirely, Keep the voice ("Proceed with a visual attack formation" is great) and have the beat not stop throughout, and apply liberal ADSR envelopes to the melody and bring in the melody on redundant channels but with different envelopes on them to give it more chorus/harmonic progression. No snare rolls, no "woo!" sound. That's just corny. And not indicative of the true ethos of trance.

Hell, I might do that. Somebody get me MIKE's digits.