Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Redemption
Label: Sensory Records
Release: 2014
Running time: 76:55
Rating: 4.5/5
This September, Redemption made prog metal maniacs everywhere happy with their second officially released live document, which takes them back to Atlanta, the very place their first official live document, 2009’s »Frozen in Moment – Live in Atlanta«, came from. »Live from the Pit« comes from Redemption’s 2012 set at the ProgPower festival, where the guys played as headliners. Over the years the band has won a lot of sympathy and respect around the world, partly because they’ve popped up as support for Dream Theater.
With the band’s future up in the air because of the brain aneurysm that hit guitarist Bernie Versailles this October, this document is all the more valuable. The band put out the album »This Mortal Coil« in 2011, and it’s still current. The set list therefore leans on newer songs, picked from an otherwise enviable catalog of five albums released so far. An extremely strong live document, especially in terms of performance, which you’d expect given the outstanding musical polish of these five talents, though it doesn’t by any means cover the older moments of the discography as well. Still, the list of everything played does include Parker’s Eyes, The Origin of Ruins, The Suffocating Silence, Nocturnal and Walls in Stronger Than Death. That’s a guarantee it’ll be tailor-made for the group’s loyal fans.
When it comes to performance, there’s nothing to fault Redemption on. This is an extremely honest, heartfelt document, where singer Ray Adler (Fates Warning) squeezes the last drop of passion and feeling out of his distinctive vocal color and his particular way of interpreting a song, while the rest of the quintet delivers a perfect prog metal theater of a performance, with the songs played at the highest level of quality. The level of Dream Theater and/or Symphony X. No slips, no stumbles, no falls. The highly vibrant atmosphere grabs you throughout at full yield, and the dynamic of how things unfold keeps the live intensity incredibly high. From the first second of the show to the last. The band delivers its stage-performance maximum.
Let’s hope Bernie pulls through. He and Van Dyk are an inseparable super-guitar duo, the kind you don’t easily come across in the (prog) metal universe. Given that the band hasn’t released a new studio album since 2011, this live document is welcome, as it bridges a longer stretch of compositional silence for the group, though we also have to face the fact that Bernie’s return is uncertain, so it may well be that »Live from the Pit« is the last officially released document featuring this excellent guitarist, who is also a member of our good old acquaintances, the old-school American speed metallers Agent Steel, who visited the Slovenian capital twice, in 2000 and 2004. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for Redemption and hope we get the group’s studio continuum in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, enjoy the excellent »Live from The Pit«.
Line-up
Ray Alder – vocals
Nick van Dyk- guitar
Bernie Versailles – guitar
Sean Andrews – bass guitar
Chris Quirarte – drums
GUEST MUSICIAN:
Andy Paredes – keyboards, programming
Production
Nick van Dyk
Track list
01. Intro/Threads
02. The Suffocating Silence
03. Dreams From The Pit
04. Parker’s Eyes
05. Fall On You
06. Noonday Devil
07. Nocturnal
08. Stronger Than Death
09. The Origins Of Ruin
10. Black And White World
11. The Death Of Faith And Reason
12. Walls
