Reviewed by David Cranson

I didn't like this album because I grew up with the '70's double live albums. What also put me off were the studio tracks included. However, you see, I had pre-judged this before I listened to it for, in around 60 minutes we are treated to the best in American rock. One studio track leads off, followed by nine live, recorded in a club in Nashville - there's a shock (!) - followed by two more studio tracks. Excellent. How wrong was I. There is one fly in the ointment, a reworking of "Eyes Of Innocence" - their breakthrough radio hit - with Pat Boone on vocals. Oh dear. It's not the mix of styles, it's poor old Pat's voice, not what it used to be on my parents' old gospel albums. Of the new songs, "In The End" is the best, combining the voices of original and current vocalists. It has the obvious themes with such a title. Original vocalist Steven Patrick turns up on live tracks taken from the first two albums as well, sounding very good. Sleevenotes: "We performed these songs together one more time, thus birthing the album title." It's mainly Steven on the oldies and Eric Wayne on the newies, but they combine effectively on a couple of the tracks, especially "Stranger", a song about the Lord. Picks of the bunch would be as above plus "Rust", "Last Train" and, of course, "See No Evil". The live tracks are obviously not recorded with a big budget, but sometimes people go too far on live albums. The naturalness works for me. One square off for Pat Boone.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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