Speaking of cheap packaging, I just cracked the plastic tray getting out the second disc from Forevermore for the first time. Inside Out label, not Radiant.
That sucks. I've noticed that there are two production runs of the albums. The set of CDs I ordered from Laser CD just have Inside Out and Century Media listed in the fine print on the bottom back side of both cases (digipak for Forevermore, jewel case for The Breath Of Life). On someone else's digipak for The Breath Of Life, I noticed that Sony Music Entertainment is shown as having been the distributor for that version, so it seems that there was one production run (presumably North American-based) that gave us TBOL in a jewel case, and another with the album in a digipak (presumably European based). I haven't double-checked discogs yet to see if its been updated with all the variations, but this is what I've come to find.
If you're hoping for a digipak version of TBOL and you live in the US and ordered from the US, you may or may not get the jewel case version, depending on where the seller got their stock from. In the case of at least Laser CD and Radiant Records, they received the jewel case version of TBOL.
On a whim, I decided to see what I would get by ordered it from Amazon (for less than $12), since a couple of folks in the TA Facebook group said they got a digipak from ordering on Amazon, so we will see! Either way, I only paid $25 for both TBOL and Forevermore by ordering from Laser CD, so I can't be too mad. Ten bucks for TBOL is a steal, regardless of what the package is made of.
I re-watched the Making Of Documentary again a bit earlier (after my first viewing late last night), and it's interesting to see how all of their ideas came together. It still astounds me that Roine brought over 90 minutes of music to the sessions, but looking at the white board, they used less than half of his ideas, but practically all of Pete's (which explains why he's everywhere on the album). Even only using maybe about 40-50 minutes of Roine's music, you can really feel his influences in places across the album, and I love it. "Lonesome Rebel" really brings me back to the Stardust We Are days of TFK, as does parts of "The World We Used To Know". I had wondered if writing the album in Europe would have given them a bit more of a European-members-heavy album, and in the case of Forevermore, I can really feel Pete's and Roine's touch across the whole thing, and I love it.
I haven't given many more spins to TBOL over the last few days as I've just been trying to digest Forevermore, and I'm on my second viewing of the Ultimate Mix visualizer (which is fantastic), but if I had to pick between the two (main) versions, I might give the edge to Forevermore, but I will still say that, lyrically speaking, TBOL has a tighter theme and concept with its "updated" lyrics that Neal wrote last summer. I do wonder if I would still like "Reaching For The Sky" over "Heart Like A Whirlwind" if I hadn't heard the former first (when the video single came out). The "newer" melodies for the verse are far more dynamic, melodically speaking, than the ones used in HLAW, but I like I said up thread, the vocal lines in the verses of HLAW mirror the ones used in "The Sun Comes Up Today", which creates a nice effect.
That said, I'm starting to warm up to the Ultimate Mix more than Forevermore, since it includes some of my favorite parts about TBOL mixed into Forevermore, and given that it's an official mix and release, I don't feel the need to try and Frankenstein a compilation myself, especially since, for the most part, the Ultimate Mix is an improvement over both versions (aside from maybe 1 or 2 odd-sounding edits, like where the Overture was expanded by a minute or so).
-Marc.