"After we finished American Don with (Steve) Albini, we were on the verge of the tension between us becoming so great that we had to part ways. I (Eric) was convinced that we had lost the true essence of the songs in the recording process. It wasn't a unanimous decision to record with Steve. We wrote the album entirely with guitar loops, and Team Storm & Stress wanted to continue in the studio with Pro Tools, which suited both what we were doing and what we wanted to achieve. Steve had just finished the great A room at Electrical, and Damon insisted that we record the drums there. He wouldn't budge on the issue. Once we got there, we realized that all the songs we had written with our pedals in multiple overdubs would only allow mono guitar recordings. We solved the problem by playing the songs to a single loop and overdubbing all the guitars later, creating a full stereo field to match Steve's great drum recordings.

This approach totally changed the way we played. It allowed for magical moments of improvisation (Peter Criss intro), but by the time the album was finished, it sounded bloated and the performances were sluggish. I was always more certain that the sound of the Akai Headrush and the tempos it set for Damon were at the heart of these songs. Ian agreed with me. In a daring last ditch effort, I had the idea to call Greg Norman (who worked for Steve!) and ask him if we could secretly come to his studio in S. Chicago after our next shows and re-record the album LIVE. It was a huge move that could never have worked, but miraculously everyone agreed and we went for it. Greg captured us personally and professionally at our hottest. The tempos are faster and no one holds back. These real live tapes show the songs exactly as we played them on tour, where they were written between June 1999 and July 2000. Now, 25 years later, the Greg Norman recordings have been dusted off and digitized. With the help of modern restoration tools and the expertise of Sir Bob Weston, we have been able to remix and remaster these recordings for the first time." - Eric Emm, bassist