LIVE

While I'm not really in favor of this recent trend of bands releasing a live album after evry studio album, this one is not bad. The members of Spock's Beard made a wise choice to stay away from most of the not terribly progressive pop songs from "Feel Euphoria" and "Octane", and focus on what most of us fans want: hard driving toght prog.

They do a fine job on the songs originally sung by Neal Morse (Was he raptured this weekend? Jus wondering). Classic SB pieces like In The Mouth Of Madness and Crack The Big Sky fare quite well under Nick D'Virgilio's voice. And Thoughts (Part 2) is wonderful on this set.

The highlight has to be Return To Whatever, a song from an Alan Morse solo album. This piece magaes to capture a bit of Return To Forever, while keeping Spock's Beard's overall sound.

The low points are the Drum Duel between NDV and Jimmy Keegan (no one without the last name Bruford or Peart should leave the drum solo on their live albums) and Ryo Okumoto's tepid solo, Hereafter.

It's mostly high points, so four stars.