Flying Colors

Flying Colors are a genuine supergroup combining members of Deep Purple, Dixie Dregs, Dream Theatre, Transatlantic, Spock’s Beard, Joe Satriani, Winery Dogs and others. They also play as a band, holding some pretty powerful musicians egos in check and focused on the same thing.

This is their second live album following the ‘Live In Europe’ set of a couple of years back and also following their second studio album ‘Second Nature’ (reviewed in Music-news.com).

This set is a real eye-opening tour de force. The musicianship is exceptional and the sense of a group of like-minded artists stronger but the difference between this and the previous live set is that the audience are more familiar with the material and are consequently far more appreciative of what the band are playing. The crowd getting right behind tracks such as ‘Kayla’ adds another dimension to the performance – often edited out of live recordings to the detriment of the ‘occasion’.

The music is complex, almost ‘Prog’ in places with solos aplenty and some stunning guitar widdling from Steve Morse and keyboards from Neal Morse, not to mention the drum power of Mike Portnoy, but the songs are also more than just a platform for solos, packed with strong melodies and riffs as well as excellent lyrical content.

This comes packed as a 2CD + 1 DVD set and for once is worth listening to all the way through to get the real strength of their live performance.