Infinite: One Great Step Returns Live Album Review

On February 28th and March 1st, 2014, Infinite held the encore concerts for their 2013 world tour, One Great Step, titled One Great Step Returns. Shortly after releasing One Great Step Returns on DVD in March 2015, Woollim released the accompanying One Great Step Returns Live Album on April 9th, 2015. This is Infinite's first live album, and I'm so excited for it as the members truly have outstanding vocals and hearing them live is simply breathtaking.

I pre-ordered this album and poster from Kpoptown, and the poster arrived 8 days after shipment (12 days after its release) and the album arrived 14 days after shipment. For the most part, it was in good condition, but there was a little dent on the bottom edge of my album.

To my surprise, the album is actually very compact! It's almost the size of a jewel CD case, but much thicker.

There is an exterior slip cover. It's nice with the geometric lines being in 3D and the reflective wording. It was actually really difficult for me to take off the slip cover, but within time it'll be looser. The album has a nice canvas texture, but because it's white, it's easy to get dirty (there were some gray marks around the corners, possibly due to the slip cover?).

Here you can see the reflective wording and the geometric lines on the album.

The side of the album and slip cover also have the album title in its reflective lettering.

The album is tri-fold, with both discs on the sides and the photobook attached in the middle. After opening the first flap, it shows the tracklist for both discs.

The disc and underneath also have the geometric line design, and underneath also includes the gorgeous OGS era logo.

Here is a closeup of the tracklist, which you probably can't see clearly. The first disc contains 12 tracks, from "Destiny" to "Still I Miss You." The second disc contains 13 tracks, from "I Like You" to "With.." Oddly enough, "Inconvenient Truth" wasn't added on this live album, despite being in the OGSR DVD, and "As Good As It Gets" is on this album, despite not being on the DVD. I really like these tracks, besides hearing them sing live, but it's cool to also hear the members' interactions with fans and random interjections, the way they alter their singing and rapping at a concert (I don't know what that's called...intonation?), and the fanchants, so I don't feel as stupid doing fanchants to the studio versions. I also like how they include the dance transitions before "Paradise," "Be Mine," and "BTD," so it really feels like I'm listening to the entire concert except for the VCRs and Infinite's talks. I absolutely love Infinite's interjections (like all those at the beginning of "I Like You" and "Lately"); I need to rewatch OGSR to see if the album is from the same day as OGSR. Also, I love listening to this album because you can really focus on the voices, whereas watching OGSR, you get distracted by watching everything and taking it all in. For instance, I never noticed Woohyun harmonizing in the background to Myungsoo's part in "I Like You"!

The photobook has about 72 pages, and is first off really cute due to its small size (kind of like The Origin note sheets).

The photobook is broken up into sections, one per each member, from oldest to youngest. Each member is given six pages of individual shots from various stages throughout the concert.

In between each member section, is a group shot on a beautiful two-page spread. I especially love the bottom page of the members looking out into the audience during the last performance.

The last pages include the lyrics and credits for all the songs, and then the album credits at the end. Overall, the photos do seem different from the OGSR DVD photobook. Even if they are the same, I think the live album's photobook has a really nice format and organization of the photos that I wouldn't mind if they were the same photos. Also I didn't bother checking if the poster photos were within the photobook, since I like the photobook so much.

The poster is very similar in format to the One Great Step Returns DVD poster, and they're the same size (as Infinite's latest posters starting with New Challenge). The DVD poster's concept is very dark and serious, and the live album poster's concept is much more light, happy, and emotional. I don't know why they couldn't choose sharper images for some of the members though...because of this, I like the DVD poster much more.

On the positive side, none of these images are in the DVD photobook, except possibly Dongwoo's (bottom right on the left page).

Overall, I absolutely love this album. I also love how this is a compilation album of Infinite's various songs since debut, so we can hear how they've improved since the release of these songs to "now" ("now" being early 2014).