In late 2014, the band signed deal with record label UDR. Tempest explained: "We’re really excited to be working with the people at UDR. A very credible label and I am impressed with their work building a future and a solid foundation for their Artists". UDR president and owner Ulrike Rudolph expressed her delight in capturing the band for the label. She said: "We are always looking to expand the label’s stable of bands with quality, not quantity, and Europe represent the finest in supremely written hard rock music. They are a group who refuse to rest on their past and continue to grow as artists and musicians, so we are absolutely delighted they have come to us."

Europe band members contacted Dave Cobb in 2014. They met up in Stockholm and rented vintage recording gear from the band The Soundtrack of Our Lives. Joey Tempest recorded demos on his phone and those demos were in poor audio quality. At first Cobb didn't want hear any of the Joey's demos, but in the end he agreed to. Next day Cobb contacted the band and said that he is impressed by the songs and that he also have ideas how to fix those songs. He joined the band in the studio and they all work together on those songs. They changed the arrangements on 4 or 5 songs and also wrote bits and segments for others. Cobb was involved in writing and instance on songs "War of Kings" and "Praise You" and keyboard intro on "Second Day". Ultimately, band recorded 12 songs.

Song "War of Kings" originate from a riff made by John Levén. After that, Joey started to build song from that riff and Cobb was involved to write instance for that song. When the song was written there were no lyrics for it and Joey sang vocal melody over it, but then Tempest started to think about adventure novel The Long Ships (1941-1945) written by Frans G. Bengtsson which he read when he was a kid. He thought it would great idea to write lyrics about Viking's early beginnings and battles between Norwegians, Danish and Swedish. Tempest explained: "There were important battles early on, where self-proclaimed kings were fighting - elected kings. It was chaos in Scandinavia. I thought it was a fascinating background for a lyric, and the melodies and the riffs lend themselves to it. So that's how it started."

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