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I had the good fortune to attend the very show documented by this live album, so to say I was psyched about getting this CD is a bit of an understatement. At the time of the concert, I didn't really know who Present were. But it was the golden age of attending Orion concerts for me — the period between discovering the place in 1996 via following Boud Deun around and becoming a parent in 1999 and having to cut way back on my concert schedule. During that brief stretch, I think I saw nearly every show held at Orion. So I didn't know who they were going in, but Present certainly left an impression on me. The powerful, dark, repetitive music, Dave Kerman playing the drums with seemingly anything he could get his hands on (for years after the show, the head of a Barbie doll he used as a drumstick at this show hung from the rafters at Orion — it might even still be there), Roger Trigaux towering over the audience in his dark trench coat, and someone near the end of the concert pounding on the stage with a big, red pipe. I'd never seen (or heard) anything like it before, but the show convinced me to pick up the Certitudes CD, and from there I ended up with the group's whole catalog. Certitudes seems to be the band's least-praised album, but it was the song "Delusions" from that CD that made me a fan. And the performance on this live album is even more intense that the studio version. Trigaux's accented vocals take some getting used to, but I think his over-the-top ranting is meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek. At least that's the way I listen to it, which adds a sense of humor to this very serious music. If that's not the way it was intended...oh well, the music still kicks ass. The whole album is good, but I agree with Brandon that the high point is the 22 minute final track, "Promenade au Fond d'un Canal". It holds the listener in a trance as it shifts through its various repeated themes and builds up momentum. It seems to go by in much less than 22 minutes. Overall, this CD makes a good companion to the previous Present Live disc. If you already like the band, then Great Inhumane Adventure is a must-buy. If you haven't tried Present, this might make a good primer. And as Brandon also said, here's hoping they release something from the 2005 tour. review by Bob Eichler — 7-24-05 —

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Having heard A Great Inhumane Adventure, a live recording documenting the final date of Present's 1998 tour of the United States, and having been lucky enough to see them in person for myself on their 2005 U.S. tour, I feel completely confident in saying: if you haven't heard this band live, you haven't heard them at all. Present's dark and imposing music, especially their earlier recordings, seems rather dry on record — I actually said of Triskaidekaphobie, "though the mood is certainly very dark, it's not very mean." But in a live setting, things get a lot nastier: like watching your mild-mannered neighbor turn into a vicious serial killer. For those unfortunate enough to have never heard Present, this recording offers a brief summary of their career through 1998 (that is, not including their later — and, in my opinion, strongest — material in No. 6 and High Infidelity). Present's music can be likened to a more aggressively rock-influenced Univers Zero, though this lineup is fairly stripped-down, with repetitive themes hammered out on piano, bass and drums over which the dual guitars of the Trigaux father-son duo weave rhythmic patterns or scream through tortuous solos. Their 2005 tour would see the addition of a cellist and reed man, giving the band the feel of an electrified chamber ensemble. That description might still be somewhat appropriate here, though in a different way. Not having heard Live or Certitudes, the Present albums most recently released at the time of this recording, three of the five pieces here are new to me. "Delusions" comes from Certitudes, with "Alone" and "Laundry Blues" appearing on Live. These three pieces are solid, but unfortunately feature a great deal of vocals, which is never a good thing for Present. Roger Trigaux doesn't really sing; instead he chants aggressively in strongly accented English. In and of itself, this isn't much of a problem. Unfortunately, when the vocals kick in the rest of the band tends to be content to sit in the background and simmer moodily; the music loses some of its drive and complexity in favor of highlighting the vocals. In the more recent Present material, the vocals are very sparse and don't interfere; in these compositions, they go on for extended passages, and those passages do nothing for me. In fact, "Delusions" starts the album with a blast of Trigaux "singing" which gave me a distinctly negative first impression of this disc. Present give themselves a huge hurdle in the prominence of their vocals, but there is good news: they clear it with room to spare. The non-vocal passages more than make up for the moments in which Trigaux is rambling, particularly in "Laundry Blues." And the two remaining tracks, taken from the band's first two albums, have no vocals — and absolutely slay. "Le Poison Qui Rend Fou" here is Part 2 of the title track of the second album, and immediately sets itself apart from the vocal-oriented pieces with its unrelenting aggression and tension-building. Trigaux's dissonant, explorative guitar work takes center stage over an insistent, repetitive piano line, building through the entire 10-minute length until a brilliant, brief closing passage which actually sounds consonant enough to be a riff by a classic hard-rock band. But the classic is "Promenade au Fond d'un Canal," from the band's debut album: a 20+ minute tour de force in which the band manipulates the repetition of dark musical cells into an unforgettable wordless story full of dramatic chase scenes, unexpected explosions, calm-before-the-storm brooding, and twisting, acrobatic gunfights. The first eight minutes is all tension and no release, guitars and piano becoming increasingly strident and tortured, until we are treated to the wonderful release that is guest Keith Macksoud's string-poppingly brutal bass solo. Macksoud was Present's full-time bassist on the 2005 tour; at the show I saw, he broke not one, but two bass strings over the course of the concert, and his appearance here is equally take-no-prisoners in its intensity. After several minutes of this jaw-dropping solo, the piece ebbs briefly before going back to building tension in tricky time signatures and complex interlocking guitar/piano motives. The buildup is so insistent that one can only hope for a conclusion that does justice to the 20 minutes preceding it; thankfully, Present is more than up to the task, and the final six minutes or so of the piece are more brutal and satisfyingly, cathartically cleansing than anything else on this remarkable recording. By way of conclusion, in spite of the vocal sections that are more miss than hit for me, Present and Mr. Feigenbaum and Co. at Cuneiform Records deserve endless plaudits for releasing this performance, which incidentally is done justice by a completely pristine recording quality. Even more, they deserve praise for the timing of this release, just before Present's 2005 tour: for if I had heard this album and not been able to see the band for myself, I would have lived in wistful envy the rest of my life. Here's hoping for a recording of the 2005 tour! review by Brandon Wu — 7-10-05 —