(Review from progreviews.com)

While a great many bands from the 70s released double-live LPs, very few can claim that their live albums matched the quality of their studio releases, and even fewer can claim that their best album was live. Magma has that right. The eccentric French prog band, led by drummer Christian Vander, thrived in front of an audience, in the moment, when they were free to follow the course of their music without the boundaries set forth by the sides of a record.

The music of this album is actually atypical for what many remember the band: martial, relentless rhythm stomps, operatic howling, bombastic horn races. Here, they expose more fully than on any previous release their jazz-rock backgrounds, and subtle, masterful musicality. The first disc is mainly comprised of one of their great long works, Kohntarkosz. Beginning with the cry, “Hamatai!”, the band launches an epic with many movements, colors, and moods. Perhaps most surprising is their ease with flowing, impressionistic soundscapes. Vander has stated that when artists in the mid-70s (such as Mike Oldfield) began to borrow his ideas, he was forced to come with a new type of music. Kohntarkosz was the fruit if his new labors, and the version on this album is definitive. Great melodic, eclectic prog, with hints of fusion as well.

The second disc is made mainly of shorter tracks, and a section of another Magma epic, Mekanik Destruktiw Kommandoh. The highlight is the brilliant fusion-romp, “Hhaď.” The track begins with Vander’s own warbly-operatic soliloquy. It explodes into a high-energy 6/8 fireball with great guitar/violin interplay, and vocals by Vander, Stella Vander (his wife), and Klaus Blasquiz. Elsewhere, “Kobah” is actually “Kobaia” (mistitled during the original printing) from the band’s first album. Heard here is a vastly different version; more squirrely, funky, fusionesque than on the first album. The band’s improvisational skills shine on the last two tracks, which come from MDK. Didier Lockwood (only 17 or 18 years old at the time) emerges as perhaps the band’s best solist, while Bernard Paganotti’s bass solo at the beginning of the last track became infamous for its increasingly distorted sound.

Line-up:
- Benoit Widemann / keyboards
- Bernard Paganotti / bass
- Christian Vander / drums, vocals
- Didier Lockwood / violin
- Gabrid Federow / guitar
- Jean-Paul Asseline / keyboards
- Klaus Blasquiz / vocals
- Stella Vander / vocals

Track List:
CD1
01. Kohntark (Part One) – 15:45
02. Kohntark (Part Two) – 16:14
03. Emehnteht-Re (Announcement) – 8:10
CD2
01. Hhai – 9:20
02. Kobah – 6:36
03. Lihns – 4:55
04. Da Zeuhl Wortz Mekanik – 6:14
05. Mekanik Zain – 18:57

Link in comments.