LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 5/18/98

It's hard to believe that they have released this concert as an official bootleg. It's perhaps James LaBrie's worst vocal performance ever. The opener track seems promising (even though LaBrie stretches his voice to the limit on the chorus) but right after that his vocals start to sound like shit and make the whole thing sound terrible though the rest of the band performs flawlessly (as usual). He barely hits the half of all high notes and goes cracking all the time. Especially Pull Me Under sounds comic because it has so many high notes in it, I just can't listen to it without laughing with tears in my eyes, and Ray Alder's untuned voice won't save the song. Scarred is not a very beautiful performance either. LaBrie has had troubles with his range since 95 (after he had accidentally ruptured his vocal chords) until a couple of years ago when his voice fully recovered at last, but 98 was one of the bad years (I'm very sorry about this because their best keyboard player up to date, Derek Sherinian was in the band that time). There are still many good performances from that period, so I don't see any point in releasing just this concert, except a brief, boring guest performance by Bruce Dickinson which is still certainly not a good enough reason for it because most of the stuff is just unlistenable. If you want to hear James LaBrie performing well, buy Live At Budokan which clearly proves that his voice is getting a lot better and he is reaching his full range again. I'm most eagerly waiting for their next live release, because I saw the band on their current Octavarium tour and LaBrie gave an impressive performance.