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Rating: Rather than seeing their live performances circulate under the table, as is theoretically the case for most bootlegs, Dream Theater have always preferred to release them officially, in the series known as Official Bootlegs. For the band, it is also an opportunity to bring to light live experiments, such as performing in full those albums they themselves adore. "The Number Of The Beast," "Master Of Puppets," "The Dark Side Of The Moon" were the previously designated victims.
In 2006, they insisted on recreating "Made In Japan," the milestone of '70s hard rock by Deep Purple, which in my opinion is unreachable, and Dream Theater indeed do not reach it. Certainly not in terms of technique or execution, as it's well known they have no issues there, but in terms of freshness, both in sound and choice of work to propose live.
Dream Theater doing Deep Purple are redundant. Petrucci, Myung, Portnoy, and Rudess perform the album excellently, no doubt about it, but the spontaneity that characterized the original work is gone. I am also firmly convinced that every singer should absolutely stick to their own repertoire, as it's surely what they do best, and this applies to James LaBrie, who insists on imitating Ian Gillan, but it's like a fish out of water (listen to Highway Star and especially the guitar-vocal duel in Strange Kind Of Woman).
This record is as natural as a concrete spill on a mountain meadow: an overly contrived experiment, where Dream Theater strive to meticulously recreate every little sound of Deep Purple, making the entire thing rather cloying. It's all too staged, as heard in the intro of Highway Star. Such a record is listened to at most once, before switching to the far superior original. It seems obvious that when daring to release such a work, the inevitable comparison to the unsurpassable original arises.
This connects to the overall judgment of this release: the triumph of uselessness, perhaps charming when seen live with the band, although even on this I have some doubts, as a fan might not pay for a ticket to see Dream Theater act like any cover band. As long as Dream Theater amaze fans like they did at Gods Of Metal 2007, where they played "Images & Words" in full, they fulfill a well-received live role. But if the surprises to expect are covers, I'm not sure to what extent it's worth sacrificing live performances of their own material in favor of works that do not belong to them.
An episode that really didn't deserve to be released on CD. It is recommended only to completists, those who wouldn't miss any release from the group. It would have been much better if they had limited themselves to circulating the recordings online, or through not entirely endorsed means. Perhaps the allure of a bootleg lies precisely in its unofficial nature, and this seems to have been forgotten by Dream Theater.
Tracklist
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