LIVE FROM THE PIT

So Redemption's been on a bit of a break since their excellent 2011 release This Mortal Coil. This has seen lots of tours and big live performances at multiple festivals. In doing so they've made quite a name for themselves and they finally decided to grace us with a live album called Live From the Pit that seems to be an average of all the material they've been playing the last three years. At Progpower 2012 they played a rather long set for a festival (at 80 minutes) with quite a wide smattering of material from different albums.

Production and mixing are usually the most important things you look at with a live album so let's see. I found them both to be very well done, I was able to hear every instrument as well as was necessary at the time, maybe the guitar wasn't quite as high as it could have been in the mix, but the keyboards are magnificently mixed so that's good. Also the guitars have a very gritty tone which I really like. The drums are a bit high, but in my experience that's something you'll find in almost every live album ever made. So the mixing and production are good, usually second most important when considering a live album is the setlist. The set they played is pretty representative of their discography. The majority of the setlist is taken from the albums The Origin of Ruin and This Mortal Coil. Only two songs each were played from The Fullness of Time and Snowfall on Judgement day, the former being my favorite that was slightly disappointing, but they did an excellent job with the two they did. Only one song from their self titled debut, but I'm okay with that.

The whole thing starts with Threads which works well as an explosive opener for both the concert and the album it's from, but immediately following it is the real show stopper In the Suffocating Silence, one of my favorite Redemption songs they really did the song justice with some really strong keyboard playi ng. Other standout performances include Parker's Eyes, Fall on You, Stronger than Death and Black and White World. Apparently this was the first time they had ever performed Parkers Eyes live so that's a cool treat for Redemption fans, not to mention they played the pants off it. Now when I say a "standout performance" I mean they really conveyed the emotion of it to the audience, they managed to use the live setting to their advantage and build up to a climax in a way that's difficult to do in studio. Especially on Black and White World, they really nailed that one. Oh also Dreams from the Pit features a really fantastic bass solo, I mean Sean Andrews played the hell out of it and his bass playing really made Dreams from the Pit a very memorable performance.

The emotion is all very heartfelt the power behind the songs is there and everything sounds really tight. One of the few issues I have with this is that for the most part everything sounds just like it did in studio, like they didn't do anything differently even the solos were pretty much exactly the same. Plus the crowd's really quiet and there's almost no crowd interaction so it hardly sounds like a live album at all sometimes. It's really more of a compilation album with scattered applause here and there. If that doesn't bother you in live albums then more power to you, but I could have done with a little more crwod involvement and maybe some improvised solos. Overall it shows that Redemption does still have it and that Ray Alder is still a great singer, I look forward to their next studio album because so far they've never really let me down.