Captured: Live

"Signing on with Deep Purple/Black Sabbath producer Martin Birch, Blue Öyster Cult made more of a guitar-heavy hard rock album in Cultosaurus Erectus after flirting with pop ever since the success of Agents of Fortune. (They also promoted this album by going out on a co-headlining tour with Sabbath.) Gone are the female backup singers, the pop hooks, the songs based on keyboard structures, and they are replaced by lots of guitar solos and a beefed-up rhythm section. But the band still were not generating strong enough material to compete with their concert repertoire, so they found themselves in the bind of being a strong touring act unable to translate that success into record sales." - All Music Guide

"They re back at it! Flying Colors launched in 2012 following a formation that began with a simple idea: virtuoso musicians and a pop singer joining together to make new-fashioned music the old fashioned way. Refreshing, classic, old and new, the recordings are saturated with the many styles, tones and hues of the players who in becoming a band delivered a unique fusion of vintage craftsmanship and contemporary music. Flying Colors is Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater), Dave LaRue (Joe Satriani) Neal Morse (Spock s Beard), Casey McPherson (Alpha Rev), and Steve Morse (Deep Purple).Live In Europe captures the quintet in Tilberg, Holland performing at 013 on September 20, 2012.  The show presents the entire studio album along with popular favorites by individual members."

"Mat Sinner has had a long and extensive career, whether with the long running band that bears his name or others like Primal Fear or Voodoo Circle. With Touch of Sin 2, Sinner retreats to the past to re-record some of his best material from early albums Danger Zone (1984), Touch of Sin (1985), Comin' Out Fighting (1986), and Dangerous Charm (1987). While they still play many of these songs in their live sets, thanks to obscure contracts, rights being bought and sold, these albums are hard to find. This is a collection of 14 songs, 11 newly re-recorded and three new ones. There's some real classics here, some really good Sinner songs. (Somehow that sounds funny.) Born to Rock, Comin' Out Fighting, Bad Girl, Concrete Jungle, and Germany Rocks are some of the best ones, getting new life from Matt and the current Sinner crew. And that crew includes a wall of guitars from three guitarists, Alex Beyrodt (also Voodoo Circle), Christof Leim, and Alex Scholpp (also Tarja Turunen) with Sinner's bass and Andre Hilgers' drums powering the rhythm section.Three new songs include two originals, Blood On The Sand and Heat Of The City and a cover of the mighty Thin Lizzy's Don’t Believe A Word. The first two sound more like modern Sinner touching the melodic metal side of things especially with the heavier Heat Of The City. The Thin Lizzy cover is simply phenomenal and fun, a tad faster, but still capturing the liveliness and groove of the original. It's the best song here. Touch of Sin 2 is a fine introduction to Sinner's early material, with the new songs a bonus. However, I'm sure those older rockers who have the older material will want to dust of their vinyl versions as well. Recommended." - Danger Dog 

DeEvolution tells the story of an elite group of leaders from a heavily industrialized city who find, brainwash and then exploit an indigenous tribe’s shaman, believing he would be the perfect supreme leader. By propping him up as possessing all the answers to societies ills the elites use him in order to gain and keep more control over the masses. They plan to influence the masses on several fronts: Religion, Media, Consumerism, and Government.Twin brothers, Jasun and Troy Tipton along with Erik Rosvold released two albums with the Progressive-Metal act Zero Hour. The band's second album "The Towers of Avarice" won sparkling reviews from nearly every metal magazine around the World and has achieved classic status among prog metal fans. Zero Hour successfully toured Europe and performed twice at Prog Power USA, the largest prog-metal music festival in the World. In 2003, fans were disappointed when Zero Hour parted ways with Erik Rosvold.In late 2007, Jasun began writing material for Cynthesis. As the music developed Jasun could only imagine one vocalist to really connect to the material. After one phone call both Jasun and Erik were very excited to work together again.The final piece of the puzzle was to find an amazing drummer. Jasun asked Troy what drummer he would like to work with. Without any hesitation Troy said, "Sean Flanegan is the guy". Sean is best known for his work with the Progressive Rock band, Enchant (Blink of an eye & Tug of War).Produced by Dino Alden, DeEvolution is the first of a projected series of albums from this reunited force of progressive metal.

Remastered edition with bonus tracks."The group's fourth album, appearing ten months following After Bathing at Baxter's, isn't the same kind of leap forward that Baxter's represented from Surrealistic Pillow. Indeed, in many ways, Crown of Creation is a more conservative album stylistically, opening with "Lather," a Grace Slick original that was one of the group's very last forays (and certainly their last prominent one) into a folk idiom. Much of what follows is a lot more based in electric rock, as well as steeped in elements of science fiction (specifically author John Wyndham's book The Chrysalids) in several places, but Crown of Creation was still deliberately more accessible musically than its predecessor, even as the playing became more bold and daring within more traditional song structures. Jack Casady by this time had developed one of the most prominent and distinctive bass sounds in American rock, as identifiable (if not quite as bracing) as John Entwistle's was with the Who, as demonstrated on "In Time," "Star Track," "Share a Little Joke," "If You Feel," (where he's practically a second lead instrument), and the title song, and Jorma Kaukonen's slashing, angular guitar attack was continually surprising as his snaking lead guitar parts wended their way through "Star Track" and "Share a Little Joke." The album also reflected the shifting landscape of West Coast music with its inclusion of "Triad," a David Crosby song that Crosby's own group, the Byrds, had refused to release -- its presence (the only extant version of the song for a number of years) was a forerunner of the sound that would later be heard on Crosby's own debut solo album, If I Could Only Remember My Name (on which Slick, Paul Kantner, and Casady would appear). The overall album captured the group's rapidly evolving, very heavy live sound within the confines of some fairly traditional song structures, and left ample room for Slick and Marty Balin to express themselves vocally, with Balin turning in one of his most heartfelt and moving performances on "If You Feel." "Ice Cream Phoenix" pulses with energy and "Greasy Heart" became a concert standard for the group -- the studio original of the latter is notable for Slick's most powerful vocal performance since "Somebody to Love." And the album's big finish, "The House at Pooneil Corners," seemed to fire on all cylinders, their amps cranked up to ten (maybe 11 for Casady), and Balin, Slick, and Kantner stretching out on the disjointed yet oddly compelling tune and lyrics. It didn't work 100 percent, but it made for a shattering finish to the album. Crown of Creation has been reissued on CD several times, including a Mobile Fidelity audiophile edition at the start of the '90s, but in 2003, RCA released a remastered edition with four bonus tracks from the same sessions including the mono single mix of "Share a Little Joke," the previously unreleased 8 minute "The Saga of Sydney Spacepig," Spencer Dryden's co-authored "Ribump Ba Bap Dum Dum," which is a spaced-out assembly of noises, effects, and pop-culture catch-phrases, and the more accessible "Would You Like a Snack?," an atonal piece of musical scatology featuring Grace Slick and co-authored by Slick and Frank Zappa." - Allmusic Guide

"While Ki was a rambling, spacious and highly melodic trip through a futuristic world of transcendental art rock and Addicted was a sparkling, sugar-drenched turbo-riff glitter bomb, the final two parts of Townsend’s latest masterwork take both him and his legion of listeners on a far less expected and disorientating journey. Part three, Deconstruction, is arguably the most deranged, complex and extreme record that Devin has ever made. Fans of Strapping Young Lad will almost certainly feel at home with its bug-eyed maze of riffs and breathtaking dynamics. Fans of Devin’s more mellow work will have to grit their teeth and hold on for dear life."