This album, AD Live, would be a treasure chest of an album if the sonics were as clean and bright as the main mix must have been these two nights in 1985. This band is one of my top five favorite of all time, and the magical music they created was so heady and complex, yet clean and beautiful. I felt they had more energetic melody than many of its prog rock peers. This live CD sounds like it is basically a soundboard mix, so it suffers slightly from a flatness and direct-line rawness that keeps the songs from breathing. But what you get is how it was performed. You'll hear spontaneous soloing and improvisational-sounding leads, and you also get to hear stuff like vocalist Warren Ham getting tired in "Lead Me To Reason." However, midway through the recording, during the song "Progress," the tight percussion sounds carry the music so dominantly that the flaws become forgotten in the background. Conclusion? A notch above the bootlegs, a notch below the touched up "live" album. This one is for fans only, but there are many of us around, so there is reason for many to rejoice.
