ARENA

While Arena's first live album, Welcome To The Stage, focused on material from their first two studio albums, this second official live album focuses on material from their third and fourth studio albums. Only Midas Vision is present on both albums. The strangely titled, Breakfast In Biarritz, was not recorded in Biarritz at all, but in Amsterdam on the tour in support of the Immortal? album.

Immortal? had seen Rob Sowden replace Paul Wrightson on vocals and here Sowden for the first time on record sing songs that were originally sung by Wrightson and original vocalist John Carson. Sowden does a fine job at this, but he sounds best on the Immortal? material. Two tracks are taken from Immortal?, including the 20 minute epic Moviedrome that opens the show. The pre-recorded spoken introduction used here is not present on the studio version. Generally, I would say that the studio versions are all better than the live versions found here, but Moviedrome could be the exception to that rule. This has never been one of my favourite Arena songs, but this live version is very good indeed. The other song taken from Immortal? is the sublime The Butterfly Man, a very existentialist song about the (lack of) purpose in our lives and how desperate the human situation really is when you really think about it. Is The "butterfly man" God? (That is my personal interpretation of the song, anyway. There are certainly other interpretations as with many of Nolan's lyrics. That's what make them so interesting for me). The guitar play by John Mitchell is magnificent here and throughout.

The masterpiece album The Visitor, is amply represented with six out of ten tracks here being from that album. Regarding these songs, I must say that the studio versions are better. Don't get me wrong though, these versions are more than fine. But perfection just cannot be improved! A possible exception is the instrumental, Serenity, on which Mitchell gets his moment in the spotlight, and he really shines. On the studio album, this piece is more of an interlude. But here, it becomes a precious piece in its own right. Still, overall, The Visitor is best heard in studio form and in its entirety.

The show ends, as has become standard, with Crying For Help VII which originally appeared on the band's second album, Pride. There it was an a cappella number, but when played live it is treated with the full on band approach. Again, I find the studio version to be impossible to improve upon. But then again, the purpose of live performances and live albums is not to improve things, but to bring your music to the people. I would have loved to be there!

Though I strongly recommend starting with the studio albums, this live album is a worthy addition to any collection that already holds the studio albums by the band.

However, that makes the companion pieces less essential, although if I had to rank order, I would place Contagious over Contagium, mostly due to the two instrumentals, Vanishing Act and Contagious. The former is an upbeat rocker that visits the central theme just a bit too much, and that latter has that standard Arena plodding rhythm but is enjoyable for its atmospherics and an absolutely blistering solo from Mitchell.

I usually include the instrumentals in my Contagion playlist, so I suppose that makes this worth obtaining, but certainly only if you are craving more Contagion-style material.

Edge of Despair rehashes a melody or two from Contagion, but is mostly a fairly simple power ballad. Good choice leaving this off the main album.

The March of Time is a decent, but largely uninspired, plodder that features some good moments. I do enjoy this lyric: "Keep that smile spread wide across your face, till your head splits in half." Otherwise quite unremarkable.

Confrontation made this worth getting, as it is a nice instrumental with notable work from Nolan (getting good use of the organ, choir effects and other synth varieties). This is good enough quality to have made Contagion.

Decent material, but don't blow your life savings to acquire it!

If you don't mind a bit of cheese (and, really, can any of us who really like neo prog say that we don't?) then it would be tough to view this album as less than four stars. Snowden does a very nice job, both in passionate and well-paced delivery ( i.e., not too slow), and with interesting lyrics. Nolan lays it on nice and thick with the keys, and Mitchell brings it all over the top with some awesome guitar work.

Exhibit A: the Painted Man. A catchy, stately theme, and the instrumental break is a great example of Mitchell and Nolan supplementing each other (as opposed to dueling, Petrucci and Rudess style). Exhibit B: This Way Madness Lies (instrumental). Mitchell's guitar has this enormous sound, and he just lets it rip--I just love this guy's feel. In addition--and perhaps more with this album than any of their others--you can actually hear the bass! Not only that, but Salmon is doing some melodic stuff, as opposed to mechanically grinding it out in the low register (as on Immortal, for example).

Overall, probably the most consistent piece from a strikingly consistent band--consistently very good, to boot. Perhaps it's the lack of a Visitor-style climactic ending, the slightly cheesy heaviness of some bits, or something I can't put a finger on, but I'm going to go against my id here and place this just out of masterpiece territory.

Excellent album: A must for those of us who enjoy what Arena has to offer. I'm going to keep hoping for them to crank out a true masterpiece of prog in the future--I know you guys have it in you!

Favourite Track: Cutting the Cards

"Don't forget to breathe" says the splendid voice of Paul Wrightson in one of the best songs of the record. It seems ironical to me, because I don't find any possibility to fill my lungs during nearly one hour. The peaceful moments are insignificant ("Elea"). We stand under the pressure of this avalanche of words and this unbridled musical gallop all the time.

Happily, there's a jewell in this album : "The hanging tree" with the emotional beauty of Wrightson's voice and the magnificent gilmourian guitar of John Mitchell. I think it's one of the most beautiful prog rock song of all times, all simply...

"Songs from the lion's cage" immediatly satisfied this need. It melts intelligently different influences : the neo prog of Pendragon, the emphasis of 1970's symphonic rock masters, more especially thanks to Nolan's keyboards alternating deep and large floods and classical flights, a floydian guitar, but also stronger moments introducing metal elements. The combinaison of all in elaborated musical structures integrating impressive instrumental developements was close to perfection and could easily make us think a prog giant was born.

Unhappily, like the following one, the album is a little bit weakened by the small crying for help pieces : pretty without any doubt but not creative. I have never understood the interest of this long divided suite.

Nevermind, the true substance of the album, the 5 main titles, give us enough musical food to feel plenitude. And the enormous final piece, "Solomon", with its subtile progression, its complex imbrication of themes, its fantastic keyboards / guitar duels and its floydian and emphatic final is a real masterpiece of prog rock in my opinion.

It seems the concept of concept albums is to find an alibi to make short songs because it's more difficult to elaborate epics. It's easier to create 12 short and distinct song with one melody each than 3 long pieces composed of 4 themes that you have to articulate and imbricate and that you must lead in the same direction. It's also easier to make short songs with just a rapid solo in the middle than to create large musical developements.

I have always thought "The lamb lies down", "The wall" and "Snow", for instance, are the weakest albums of Genesis, Pink Floyd (except the Final cut but it's a Waters' album !) and Spock's Beard.

There are great ideas in "Contagion". But none is really developed. Of course, these musicians are excellent, and the voice is splendid. But I think the potential of this group is much bigger than what they show in this restrictive song format.

It took Arena a little bit longer to release this album making it their 6th studio release in a 10 year span and, up to this point, there seemed to be no decline in the quality of their output which in fact only grew with each consecutive recording. Even thought I loved Contagion I still didn't consider myself a huge Arena follower which meant that I only found out about this release by reading the February 2005 issue of Classic Rock Magazine. In that issue Pepper's Ghost was reviewed by Nick Shilton who gave it a solid 4 star rating while mentioning that the album deserves more attention than it is likely to receive due to his claim that Arena have so far been "largely unheralded and unfairly shunned in the UK".

Needless to say, when even a magazine like Classic Rock acknowledges a lesser known new release by a band that I've been following for a few years I just had to hear this so-called excellent Arena release. It didn't take me long to track down this album but once I did so and heard it for the first time my reaction was quite mixed. At first I thought that these compositions would grow on me but as it stands today my verdict still remains quite uncertain which quite frankly suggests that the album probably wasn't all I expected it to be. Surprisingly enough even The Visitor has managed to grow on me more than this album over the past few years.

What I basically lack are those great compositions that were featured on Immortal? and Contagion. It all gets to a decent start with Bedlam Fayre but what happens in between the opening number and Opera Fanatica is just not on par with the songwriting on previous releases. The album's biggest highlight comes towards the last minutes of Opera Fanatica where I once again can distinguish those mighty sparks of genius but unfortunately the album is over by the time and Arena never gets a proper chance to get back into the saddle.

This is quite a disappointment of an album that barely deserves the good, but non-essential rating that I'm giving it. My only hope is that the band will work things out on their next release.

**** star songs: Bedlam Fayre (6:08) The Eyes Of Lara Moon (4:30) Tantalus (6:51) Opera Fanatica (13:06)

*** star songs: Smoke And Mirrors (4:42) The Shattered Room (9:45) Purgatory Road (7:25)