Recording the very first concert in Poland? And then follow that up by releasing the result as the very first DVD of the band? Who comes up with ideas like that? Well, it seems like enormously clever people come up with ideas like that, because at second glance the decision makes perfect sense: Poland has already been excellent terrain for progressive music for quite a while. Consequently it does not come as a surprise at all to find that Bavaria-based Dante have provoked nothing but sheer enthusiasm amongst the Polish! But only giving people a glance at the works of the band does not do for Dante… not enough… why not record the Augsburg show of the tour, too? Done!

The set list of Katowice did not only include songs of the latest record “When We Were Beautiful” but also comprised classics from the group’s ten-year history like “Vanessa” and “November Red.” The Augsburg show fills the contextual gaps that the temporal confines of a concert ripped in the first recording: material that could not be fit in the concert at Katowice was simply played in Augsburg. That is why the tragic death of founding-member Markus Berger in the year 2013 is not only a constant and spiritually important factor within the concept of Dante. Through the inclusion of his compositions Berger is really always at the heart of the show. That is the constellation that leads the way to emotionally charged performances like the ones that managed to entice the audiences of Katowice and Augsburg into the stream of energy, emotion, precision and artistic intelligent that can be experienced firsthand on “Where Life Was Beautiful.”

The DVD at hand displays a collective of musicians at the height of its powers. The seemingly idiosyncratic aspects – since Berger’s death the band has performed concerts without a bass player – are in this case not impediments but manifest additional impulses that drive the experience that is “Dante” further ahead. Actually the special gems of the approach are what pushes the performances into a different dimension – in a beautifully organic way.
“Where Life Was Beautiful” shows two concerts of a band that is rapidly progressing into the future – without neglecting its roots. That mixture can be seen in the big picture of the song selection of the two recorded shows. In that way the basic concept “DVD” as a fascinating momentary snapshot is turned into a lasting monument of the accumulated works of a group of artists who are only just beginning to realize the true extent of their electrifying energy. Releasing two concerts at a time turns out to be a genius move: one can hardly experience a band in a more three-dimensional way.