Been listening to the live-CD on Spotify for a couple of days now.
My thoughts:
- On some songs Stu sounds very good. Danteīs Inferno, Wolf, Ten Thousand Strong and some other songs comes to mind.
The growling on the phrase "Open wide the gates" on Danteīs Inferno was awesome, and so unexpected.
The playing is in general very good, and the mix isnīt bugging me so much after a couple of listens.
- Brent Smedley is a beast. Sure, he plays a bit stiff, like a machine.. especially on the tracks when they use background-tracks (Danteīs Inferno, Burning Times etc..). However, he is tight as hell (and the only person that isnīt obviously overdubbed.. iīll come back to this later).
However, there are a lot of negative things to point out, especially on the DVD.
- I donīt mind a couple of overdubs here and there on a live-album, just to make a finishing touch on the product. However, on this release itīs so obvious there are overdubs all over the place, it isnīt funny!
Example: When Troy is playing rhythm-parts, itīs obvious that they have just deleted Troys parts and doubled Schafferīs guitar tracks. Wolf is a very good example of this. You can clearly see that Troy is just strumming power-chords on some occasions, while you are hearing the chugging rhythm. The stereo-rhythm track is in general so tight it wouldn īt be humanly possible that the audio would be coming from two different guitar-players.
I would guess that 50% (or more) of the vocals are overdubbed as well. On the DVD, you can clearly hear that Stu is phrasing some lines differently than the video shows. This happens a lot. Some of the time, it seems that the audio and video arenīt completely synced, something that probably is because most of the band (except the drums) are overdubbed.
- Someone else pointed out the worst thing about the audio on the DVD and CD: THIS DOESENīT SOUND LIKE A LIVE-RECORDING! The crowd-noises are mostly non-excitant, and the band sounds like theyīre playing in the studio (and they probably are...). Itīs painful to watch Stu engaging the crowd on instrumental-passages. You can see the crowd roaring, fists in the air - in general, the crowd going nuts. BUT YOU CANīT HEAR THEM!! WTF??
- As i stated earlier, Stu sounds OK on a lot of songs. However, he is definitely overdubbed all over the place, and in general he sounds constipated. Really! He sounds like heīs got the largest turd stuck up his colon.. His falsetto, growling and the occasional "normal" mid-range-vocal saves some parts, but in general it sounds like crap..
Yeah, thatīs my reflection after watching the DVD.
Conclusion: The CD has its moments, while the DVD sucks..