Before You Die. In 2015, it was chosen as the 27th greatest progressive rock album by Rolling Stone. Paul Elliott of Classic Rock magazine called it a progressive rock masterpiece. Many of the songs on the album remained staples of the band's shows well into the 21st century ("School", "Bloody Well Right", "Rudy", and the title song). Almost all of the album appears on the band's 1980 live album Paris although the tracks that feature orchestrations on the studio versions ("Asylum", "Rudy", and "Crime of the Century") were replaced by string synthesisers or Oberheim synthesisers, which were played mainly by Helliwell with some help from Hodgson. Hodgson has also included songs from the album ("Dreamer", "Hide in Your Shell", "School" and "If Everyone Was Listening") in his concerts. Releases The first release was on vinyl by A&M Records in 1974. In 1977, it became the first pop music LP title re-issued by the audiophile label Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. A&M released it as one of the first CDs in its "Audio Master Plus" series in 1984, which it then reissued in 1990. Mobile Fidelity also released its own remastered CD version on a gold disc as part of its "Ultradisc" series, in November 1984. A new remastered CD version of the album was released by A&M in 1997, followed by a different remaster on 11 June 2002. The newer A&M remasters feature all of the album art restored plus credits and full lyrics, which were missing from some earlier editions. Both 1997 and 2002 A&M remasters were from the original tapes by Greg Calbi and Jay Messina at Sterling Sound in New York. The 1997 remaster has all tracks peaking at 100 percent, significantly altering the original dynamic range of the recording and effectively adding new distortion to the sound. The 2002 edition is not quite as loud but still has much of the same effect. The album was re-issued by German audiophile label Speaker's Corner in 1999, as a 180 gram vinyl LP. It has none of the dynamic range compression applied to the A&M remastered CD versions. It was announced in October 2014 that the album, remastered by Ray Staff, would be reissued in CD, digital download, and 180g vinyl formats on 9 December 2014. In addition to the original album, the release would include a complete recording of a 1975 Hammersmith Odeon concert, a 24-page booklet of