AFI – I Heard A Voice – Live From Long Beach Arena

I Heard A Voice – Life From Long Beach Arena came as a bit of a surprise to most people. Despite the well known status of the band, no one knew about the band’s decision to release a live album until a few weeks before the record actually hit stores. You would have thought that whispers of the release would have made it’s way through to the internet, but they didn’t (or if they did, I certainly missed it). In a way though, it makes sense that AFI would be able to release the live album without much information being leaked; after all, I Heard A Voice was already completed and released in a different format close to a year ago.

You see, I Heard A Voice is the CD companion to last December’s DVD of the same name. Only, instead of a video documentation of the night of the band’s largest headlining show to date, it is the sonic documentation of the evening. This means that anyone who had decided to steer clear of the DVD release due to a lack or love for the format can now bring the same performance home in CD form instead while anyone who owns or has seen the DVD will know exactly what they’re getting with the album.

What they are getting is a perfectly recorded AFI live show; and when I say perfectly recorded, I mean it. The production of the album is fantastic. Everything fits into the mix seamlessly, the audio is crystal clear and every element of the band’s performance is evenly leveled as if it was a studio recording. That’s not saying it sounds overly produced or that it doesn’t sound like a live album, far from it. I Heard A Voicesuccessfully fits the crowd participation into the record, something that many live albums fail to do – Sum41 and Against Me!‘s recent live albums being two prime examples of that failure. The crowd’s singing voices can be heard alongside Havoc’s vocals while little comments like “I Love You!” can also be heard faintly in the background on songs like This Time Imperfect.

As far as song selection goes, the band tends to stick to songs from Decemberunderground and Sing The Sorrow since the show was in support of the former record. Conversely, they do have a select few older cuts too. On top of the staples songs like God Called In Sick Today from Black Sails In The Sunset and The Days Of The Phoenix from The Art Of Drowning, they also pull in the help from Nick 13 (Tiger Army) for A Single Second off of Shut Your Mouth & Open Your Eyes. Other than that though, the remaining fifteen songs are split between the band’s last two albums; so if you’re gonna pick up the release make sure you’ve accepted the band’s new direction.

Sonically, this is easily one of the most impressive live albums I’ve heard in a very long time. It loses some points for the fact that it’s already been released in DVD form but chances are I’ll listen to this more than I would watch the DVD, so that’s only a slight negative which leaves you with only two things to consider when buying I Heard A Voice: 1) Do I like live CDs? (many people don’t) and 2) do I likeDecemberunderground and Sing The Sorrow? If the answer to both of those are yes, then pick it up; if the answer to either of them is no, then leave it on the self and move on to something else.