Those criticisms aside, this is a good work and deserves both attention and praise. Midnight Odyssey is, so far, the only continuation of the Burzum approach I've heard that I can really appreciate without having to justify why I don't just listen to Burzum instead.
This is why I enjoy Midnight Odyssey a lot as well. I mean, there are a few other Burzum continuations that I think are pretty great (first I Shalt Become album, some of Branikald's stuff, Forteresse's second album), but this is definitely one of the best. There seems to be some intangible and hard to describe feeling of "getting it" that Midnight Odyssey has and that many, many others don't possess. You can tell that a lot of effort was put into the music, but it was more than an effort just to "be a black metal band," if that makes sense.
The depth of the synthesizer layers is probably what really does it for me. There are a few moments that didn't really blow me away on this album: specifically, the songs "Lost" and "An Ode to Dying Spiritsl," but most of it was really great. I don't know if I would say that Dis Pater needs to "trim the fat" or anything like that, since the long, involved tracks (both the pure ambient ones and the more black metal songs) are the best parts of the album. I get the feeling that I'll probably feel the same way about those songs in a few years as I do now about "Dungeons of Darkness": fairly cool ideas that I can see the reasoning behind, but they just aren't really to my taste. It will be interesting to see if these ideas get expounded and improved upon in the years to come, like how "Dungeons of Darkness" became "Den Onde Kysten" and "Svarte Troner," two very enjoyable tracks.
Also, does anyone else detect a bit of a Summoning influence in Midnight Odyssey's stuff? I know that the man behind the band has confirmed that he was influenced by a diverse array of music like Arcana, Mortiis, and Klaus Schulze, but for some reason, I hear a lot of "Nightshade Forests" as well.