Arena - Caught In The Act
Performance
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Arena - Caught In The Act
Performance
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Arena are one of the more popular bands to emerge from the British neo-progressive rock movement, which includes bands such as Marillion, IQ, Pallis, and Jadis. They were formed in 1994 by Clive Nolan, the former keyboardist of Pendragon, and Mick Pointer, the former drummer of Marillion, and have already seen enough lineup changes to make even Yes seem rather stable. Arena's first couple of albums found them being compared to Fish-era Marillion and a little bit of IQ, but with their last few albums they have moved in a heavier, less progressive direction. I actually found the new Contagion material reminding me a lot of old Blue Oyster Cult, and even a little bit of Dio, especially with the vocal style. Caught In The Act was recorded at the Krzemionki television studios in Krakow, Poland in April 2003, during Arena's tour in support of their 2003 album Contagion. The show kicks off with 12 of the 16 songs from that album before even getting to the material from their first five albums. Contagion was amazingly the first full length Arena studio album to feature the exact same band members as its predecessor, which obviously helped to make it one of their finest efforts. At first glance, this concert seemed to have it all - excellent musicianship, a brilliant light show, good songs, decent enough production - but I just found it a little boring overall. It took me about five different sittings to get through the whole thing, because I would usually loose interest after a few songs and want to listen to something else. There were two obvious problems which kept the excitement level way down. First of all, the band are not very dynamic performers and had little rapport with the audience. Although vocalist Rob Sowden has an excellent set of prog-rock pipes, and adds some nice Gabriel-esque drama to the performance, I found him somewhat annoying more often than not, especially those ridiculous looking green, fluorescent, plastic glasses he wore during almost the entire Contagion set. John Mitchell's Petrucci-meets-Gilmour guitar style was technically outstanding, and I found myself focused on his playing the most, but his stage presence was that of just somebody going through the motions. You think they'd show more life when being filmed for their first DVD. The second obvious problem with this concert recording was that there was very little live ambience captured. Audience sounds were almost completely non-existent, which meant that either there were no ambience microphones used in the audience, or the crowd was almost completely quite. The most telling example of the atmosphere of this show was at the end of the first set, when Sowden's comment "This is the last song of the set I'm afraid", was met with a single "OH". That about summed up the excitement level from the crowd. Only during the encores did you see any significant response from the crowd. I am not suggesting that Arena's performance on this DVD is terrible - it is actually quite good. Arena fans will certainly swallow it like Belgian chocolate, but it is unlikely to win over too many new fans. A few of the standout performances were the classic-Rush sounding "This Way Madness Lies", and the ELP/Yes inspired "Riding The Tide", which were both from Contagion. Also the encore performances of "Solomon" and "Jericho" from their debut album Songs From The Lions Cage, sounded excellent, as well as the catchy Van Halen-esque riffage of "Crying For Help VII", which closed the show. The audio output on this video was the lowest I have ever heard on a concert DVD. If I normally listen to a concert DVD with my surround amplifier volume set to 40, I had to turn this one up to about 70 to get the same level. After you compensate enough with the volume, however, the audio quality sounded very good. The instruments were clear and the mix was well balanced. The video was a little grainy, and not the sharpest I have ever seen, but you got a true small venue concert atmosphere due to the somewhat low lighting conditions which made Arena's outstanding light show really stand out. I prefer it when they do not use a bunch of extra stage lighting to enhance the filming, so that you get more of an authentic concert atmosphere. Their light show reminded me a little bit of Dream Theater's Images and Words tour. The extra features on this DVD were quite extensive and included biographies of the band and each of the current individual members. Also included was a lengthy interview with Mick Pointer and Clive Nolan as well as a discography, photo gallery, art gallery, desktop images, and weblinks. Although I will probably not be dusting this DVD off my shelf for a long time, nor was I inspired to run out to buy any of Arena's albums, Caught In The Act does make a fine addition to any prog-rock collection, and is recommended for fans of the neo-progressive rock genre in particular. Reviewed by Paul M. Roy - June 2005 |
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Running Time: 120 Minutes |
DVD Release Date - August 2003 |