Disappointed
C. Plummer | 08/24/2007
(2 out of 5 stars)
"I heard a few clips of this album on the radio and the clips were pretty hilarious. But the album on the whole is awful. The majority of the tracks are from a live performance, and the levels are mixed horribly. I am constantly fumbling with my volume knob. You can barely make out the vocals, and what you do hear is muffled and unintelligible. It is extremely disappointing. There was a lot of potential here and I expected much more. If the vocal track from the show was clear, this album would have kicked butt."
If you're an SOD fan, you'll like it, if not...
M. Henke | Saint Charles, MO United States | 09/14/2007
(3 out of 5 stars)
"As the title of my review states pretty plainly, you'll like this disc if you're an SOD fan, but to what extent, I can't guarantee. As the only other review states (at the time of my writing this), and I will agree, it was recorded terribly. It sounds basically like a soundboard recording, the live portion anyway(which is most of the disc). But having seen quite a few bootlegs and demos of SOD shows, I have to say it's a pretty typical live show from SOD, so the average fan of Billy, Scott and the boys would not be very surprised or upset. I wasn't. It really doesn't reflect on the material itself though. The concert is classic SOD, and the fact that they do The Ballad of Nirvana (Kurt Cobain?) to open the live show in SEATTLE Washington, home of the grunge movement, is priceless. Billy even makes a remark about that in the liner notes. As for the 4 new studio songs that start the disc, they are good, solid tracks. Two are new SOD songs, two are covers of Agnostic Front and Negative Approach songs. Not having heard the original tunes that are covered, I can't really compare, but I do think they sound pretty tight. Of course, being hardcore tracks, they are very short in nature, clocking in at about a minute and a half each. The two SOD songs are really good, too, although the excessive blast beats in Java Amigo made it a bit difficult for me to understand the lyrics the first time through. Overall, though, it's a fun disc and if you didn't spend too much on it, you get your money's worth out of it. IF you're a Stormtroopers of Death fan, that is. If not? Well, I'm not sure why you would make this your first purchase by them. You'd be much better off buying Speak English or Die (they're first album) or Bigger Than the Devil, their other studio release, to see what the buzz is really about."
A Mixed Bag But Still Lots of Thrashy Goodness
knifemare69 | 05/22/2008
(4 out of 5 stars)
"Honestly I bought this record for the four new songs, two of which I already had versions of from the New York's Hardest vol. 3 compilation. Still, if you're a fan of S.O.D. you can't go wrong here. The live songs are not that great production wise, but then again nobody ever listened to S.O.D. for note-perfect things anyway - they're a joke band for crying out loud!
Yes, the humor is abundant in the spoken interludes between tracks. The downside is that the live numbers don't include ANY of 'Bigger Than the Devil,' which is kind of a bummer. But hearing them do the Ballad of Nirvana in Seattle just takes the cake! This is more like what S.O.D. did with Live at Budokan back in '92 - a gimme for the fans more than anything."
Track Listings (24) - Disc #1