TEN YEARS ON 1995-2005

To celebrate Arena's tenth anniversary, Verglas (their record company, owned by Clive and Mick) decided to market this compilation which is a nice journey though their six studio albums. Actually, it is the first of that kind so far.

On this compilation, there is a good (and extended) live version for "Chosen", a new version of "Empire Of Thousand Days" with Rob on vocals (I personally, preferred the original version). Each track is very good of course but some great anthems of the band are forgotten like "Jericho", "Sirens", "Fool's Gold " and more recently "Opera Fanatica" from their sublime last studio release "Pepper & Ghost".

Of course, we can console with "Solomon"...I understand that an Arena compilation is not easy to put together. On their earliest albums, several very long songs were featured, while later on they will release two concept albums which is always difficult to compile. So, I guess, we'll have to live with this one.

I honestly would recommend more their live albums which were real "best of". "Welcome To The Stage" + "Welcome Back !" (representing all the interesting numbers from their first two albums ("Lions Cage" and "Pride") as well as "Breakfast in Biarritz " ("Visitor & Immortal" oriented). "Live & Life" was a double album, which was more a kaleidoscope of their whole discography (disc II) while disc I was fully concentrated on "Contagion".

Three stars but only for Arena's newbies. I would say to the old Arena fans, that the numbers which are different than the originals, do not justify to buy this album.