A decent recording of some of their best songs.
Amy | outer space | 09/23/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"*Scratches head.* Okay. Why is it that, in the midst of so much soap opera-like drama between Infernus and Gaahl and King, all this stuff is getting released? First it was the Krakow DVD, now this. I saw that this had been released, and my first thoughts were, "Which Gorgoroth released it?" Well, I still don't know that, I have enough drama in my own life to bother looking up what is actually going with Norway's biggest drama queens, but I wonder if this was actually necessary. But anyway, onto the actual disc...
Continuing in a time-honoured tradition of overly-short Gorgoroth discs, this runs just over half an hour. This "live" part is sort of a misnomer, i.e. recorded in the studio. "Live" as opposed to "dead," I guess. That would explain the lack of crowd noise, anyway and the semi-clean-ish production. Okay, not exactly clean, I mean, it's Gorgoroth, you're not supposed to be able to make out exactly what is happening in the music, but despite all the distortion it still sounds like a studio recording. The vocals are actually mixed a bit prominently, and I was amazed that, for the first time ever, I could make out most of the lyrics. As much as I love Gaahl, I still cringe when I hear him do stuff that originally had Pest on vocals because Gaahl tends to be so much more nasal-sounding. The only exception is "Profetens Aapenbaring." I've read so many reviews in which people hate on Gaahl singing this (emphasis on the word "singing" here), and I think he sounds pretty good here, actually, except the silly noise he makes at the beginning. I'm inordinately fond of that song though, so I may be biased. On the other hand, I'm inordinately fond of "Blood Stains the Circle" and I was grossly offended by how Gaahl sounded on that on the live DVD.
Some of this just feels like a sort of pointless re-recording of older Gorgoroth material but with Gaahl instead of Pest. Still, it sounds good, and it is kind of nice to hear different versions of the same old stuff, even if it isn't really all that different. In fact the mixing on this is pretty good. I'm not crazy about the drum sound, but overall it still sounds good.
"Unchain my Heart!!!" is probably my favorite later-era Gorgoroth song, and the guitars are sounding excellent, despite the questionable vocal effects halfway through. This song is why it makes me sad that Infernus and the others are fighting. [*weeps bitterly*]
So maybe I've changed my mind and don't see this as a pointless release anymore, but if you don't have a Gorgoroth shirt for every day of the week, chances are you don't like them enough to merit spending your hard-earned cash on it. If you do (and I do), it's nice but still feels slightly redundant after the release of the DVD. I'm going to rate this highly because it sounds good though."
Track Listings (8) - Disc #1