LIVE

This live release came out hot on the heels of Spock's Beard's self-titled album, so in principle it should be pretty solid, since to my mind the Nick D'Virgilio-as-frontman era of the band was really tightening up around this time as far as their studio albums were going - Feel Euphoria was a solid release which stabilised the ship, but Octane and Spock's Beard saw things really clicking for the new configuration of the group as they got used to not having Neal Morse as their main songwriter.

Indeed, they seem pretty good onstage here, though I feel like the mix doesn't quite do them justice; there's a few bits where Nick's voice seems a little overwhelmed, for instance, and it's quite hard to judge whether this is down to him struggling or him simply not being where he needs to be in the overall mix. This and the odd little technical blemish here and there on the one hand establishes that this is a fairly untampered-with live recording (which in some respects makes the band's capabilities more impressive than if the material had a bit more of a touch-up), but at the same time I feel like it could have done with a bit more love in between the master tapes and the actual release to the public.

As such, whilst the album contains a competent band playing good versions of some of their best material, at the same time the production is just loose enough to be annoying, and when the studio versions are right there there's not much reason to be too overexcited about what's here. Worth a listen if you are very big on this era of the band, but doesn't feel like a keeper to me unless you want to be a competist.