"Carved In Sand", both made and broke the band at the hand of a relentless touring regime, is undoubtedly their singular best work, a realisation of the band's abilities and potential, Hussey stepping beyond the lyrical and empty clichés of a tired rock language (apart from one laughable line in "Into The Blue"), a powerful cohesion of memorable song writing, superlative production, and that rarest of moments in a bands life when everything gels and becomes more than the sum of its parts. Like all four nights, the songs are played in a new and different running order that , perhaps, reflect the hindsight of time, but also the dynamics and necessities of the live show. Bonus tracks from the shows, ex-gratia the album, are also on the discs, being different arrangements of certain songs, alternate performances, and extra songs. Sonically and performance wise the band are on their strongest form that I've heard from them live in at least a decade. It's as if the band knew that, since these performances were being recorded, that the stakes were high.
The Mission - despite being a great rock band throughout their career and producing a fine body of work (albeit one that stuck determined to a relatively limited palette) - painted themselves into a corner. This set is an authentic Mission experience but the band performing these songs had nothing to do with the band who wrote this material, apart from sharing a singer. As a package, it's a fine production : exhaustive, fine value for money, containing quality performance worthy of permanence and a suitable epitah to their career.