Transatlantic's unwavering consistency will delight fans: others may find it wearisome

Mike Portnoy & Co's live version of Absolute Universe is another album to add to your Absolute Universe collection

Transatlantic: The Final Flight: Live At L'Olympia cover art
(Image: © InsideOut)

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Sticking to Transatlantic drummer Mike Portnoy's dictum that "more of anything is never enough", progmeisters Transatlantic leave us – if indeed they really are leaving us – with a fourth, live, version of their Absolute Universe album, having already released three versions of the 2019 record because they couldn't agree on an edit.

You can rest assured that nobody has dared tamper with the live version - although it does beg the question of how Portnoy, Neal Morse and the other band members decided which songs to play at the show, which was recorded at Paris Olympia at the end of their tour last year. 

Transatlantic fans will be delighted, of course, particularly those who bought The Absolute Universe Demos to add to their collection, but less committed fans might find the unwavering consistency of the tracks a little wearisome at times.

There's also room for a few career highlights, although how these were chosen is anyone's guess.

Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.