I'm a closet Asia fan, intepret that how you want
Their debut is an AOR classic, Asia went for the grandiose arena rock style from the word go and in Mike Stone they had the producer that knew exactly what the band wanted, he'd worked as engineer with Queen in the 70s but it was on Journey's
Escape that he emerged as one of the biggest AOR producers around. It also helped that all of Asia's members had impeccable credential as musicians as well. The follow-up albums
Alpha and
Astra were nowhere as good as the debut and despite having their moments were basically just copies of the debut and sounded rather souless. The group kind of broke up around then, due to their fading popularity and reformed with John Payne as frontman, but they were a much lower key band by then, I know John Wetton has returned to the band but haven't heard any of the recent stuff.