By the time of their eighth album,
Audio-Visions,
Kansas had entered the post-platinum solo-album phase of the typical successful rock group's career. Leaders
Kerry Livgren and
Steve Walsh were devoting time to making their own records, and
Kansas was becoming a part-time occupation. The two divided up the songwriting chores on
Audio-Visions, alternating
Livgren's always spiritual and by now explicitly religious lyrical sentiments and ornate musical structures with
Walsh's earthier and harder-rocking concerns.
Livgren's Christian-themed "Hold On" ("Outside the door He is waiting") made the Top 40, and
Walsh's "Got to Rock" was a singles-chart entry, but nothing here matched the music from the group's late-'70s heyday.
Audio-Visions was the last of seven straight
Kansas albums to go gold or platinum and the last album made by the group's most successful lineup. In 1981,
Walsh quit. ~ William Ruhlmann