This is simply the Best Live Steve Morse era Live recording available.
Some may feel that "Total Abandon" is better but it doesn't seem to be available as a cd anymore. The mastering on this cd has a glorious crisp sound. Gillan hits every note, including the high note in the second chorus during Woman from Tokyo, and he hits it good! Jon Lord is having a great night very tight and fearless. Steve Morse again very tight and fearless. Glover and Paice are clearly enjoying themselves as they swing through this thunderous set. The DVD should be equally great. I have all of their live stuff from the Morse era ( the Bootleg Box , the Soundboard box and all the DVDS) and I can say that this tops all of them. Both the '1996 and '2000 songs are great. No cringing on these performances at all. Please do yourself a favor and plug this in ,light up a cigar and let the speakers shake your house in glorious Purple fashion.

Deep Purple release a huge number of live albums - this is the third from the 1996 European tour I own (Live Encounters and Live At The Olympia are the other two). While too much Deep Purple is rarely enough, this set is a ripper. Ten tracks from a festival appearance (plus, confusingly, two bonus tracks from 2000 at the same venue), well recorded, the band in top form, and Steve Morse demonstrating the style that makes him a worthy Deep Purple guitarist. I buy almost everything Deep Purple put out, and I was very impressed with this one. Recommended.

The sound was good, the mixing even better. Morse does some fine work on this one. Plays hard on Ted the Mechanic, Pictures of Home & No One Came.... Gillan does some nice work on Hey Cisco. The bonus songs were a little different... same venue, 5 years earlier. Not a bad effort none the less.

Awesome live show. The sound is clear and loud, and the band are playing great. Nice to see the band still keeping on, and they've really trimmed alot of the excess noodling and extended solos from earlier incarnations to now just rocking and jamming away. The addition of Steve Morse in 1994 really shows how refreshed these aging rockers look and play. The new material sits well with the old classic chestnuts. 5 stars.

I'm a long-time Deep Purple fan, and as much as I don't like the idea, Richie Blackmore walked away from this band voluntarily after 1993's half-hearted, inferior album "The Battle Rages On." Steve Morse...a guy with no shortage of chops...sits in the guitar chair now. He is supremely gifted and driven, and the fact that he's not Blackmore pales in light of the scorching performance he delivers here (along with every other member of the band). I was less enthusiastic about Don Airey as Jon Lord's replacement, despite his pedigree, but Lord's here, and so are Mach II alumni Gillan, Glover and Paice. The song selection is tight, the performance is red-hot. The songs are being kept alive by musicians who are INTO IT, so what else can you ask for? You can't write the history of 70s metal...or 70s FM radio for that matter...and leave Deep Purple out. These songs are timeless, and in their original incarnations, they changed the landscape of rock & roll forever. Eagle Records has shown a penchant for ONLY releasing quality performances...no cutting room floor garbage, no dreck. This is no exception. Get your Bic lighters ready...you WILL be lighting them. As a bonus, "Woman From Tokyo" is played straight here (as opposed to the "goof" version on the 1988 Blackmore-era concert disc "Nobody's Perfect," that fell apart into a version of Buddy Holly's "Every Day" and was pretty much a teaser, a disappointment, and a waste of space).