OCTANE TWISTED

The Incident had a somewhat mixed reception as far as Porcupine Tree albums go, and heralded the start of the hiatus which was only alleviated just recently with the release of Closure/Continuation. Octane Twisted, then, is one of the last documents of the pre-hiatus version of Porcupine Tree, hailing as it does from the Incident tour and leading off with the 55-minute song cycle which formed the first CD of that album in initial versions. (More recent rereleases take the less wasteful and more economical approach of putting all the songs on one CD - for they will fit.)

As it stands, I think I faintly prefer this live rendition of the epic to the version on the album - it feels a bit looser, more organic, the band a little more comfortable with the direction it represents. Following this up with a nicely selected clutch of tracks from across the Porcupine Tree back catalogue, Octane Twisted is about as good a presentation as this material had.

Nonetheless, I don't find it as compelling as, say, the live albums from the Fear of a Blank Planet period, the band feeling perhaps a touch tired at this point - suggesting that the hiatus was, perhaps, a creatively necessary and inevitable thing at this point. It's also hard to deny that things perk up a bit on the second half; The Incident has its merits, but it still feels like it wasn't quite the album it could be, that something was a little askew in the process which prevented it from hitting the standards of preceding albums.