WELCOME TO THE STAGE

Arena produced two good studio albums so far. But IMO, the second one was a timid copy of their debut "Songs From the Lions Cage". If you bear in mind that out the eighteen songs produced on both albums, eight were interludes called "Crying For Help" (one to eight); they totalized ten full songs so far.

Almost all of them will be featured here. I say almost because "Empire Of A Thousand Days" and "Fool's Gold" will be featured on a live EP called "Welcome Back! to the Stage". A third song featured on "Welcome Back!" will be one of the serie of "Crying". It is a well known part of their live performances (up to now). It is "Crying IV".

Arena is a very good band on stage. They communicate very well their enthusiasm with the audience and demonstrates a great musicianship. All of this is represented here. The sound is also very good, so we will have a very pleasant live album here.

Not a single weak moment of course. The tracklist is outstanding. Nothing else than very good to great numbers. IMO "The Healer" is the weakest track. It was featured on their short album (or long EP if you prefer) called "The Cry" which was holding the eight "Crying" numbers as well as two unrealeased songs of which "The Healer". Paul Wrightson sounding furiously as Fish in this track. A bit too much, I must say.

Most of the songs are quite faithfull to the original though, maybe a bit (but just a bit) harder...

My preferred songs here are "Out Of The Wilderness", "Sirens", "Jericho" (which works really well while played live. It is really outstanding here) and of course the wonderful "Solomon" with its brilliant and emotional closing part. A "Best Of" Arena from the early days, really.

Since the numbers are close to their studio version, I might even recommend this live album to Arena newbies. It will be a cheaper way to get almost all of the great tracks of their previous two efforts for the price of one.

Four stars for this very good Arena live album. I would even say nine out of ten.

Actually, if Arena had dropped "The Healer" and replaced it with "Fool's Gold " it would have reached the masterpiece status.