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One of the most essential pop/rock albums of our time. CTD managed to capture the essence of what a pop/rock album should consist of. Great melodies, a handful of potential hit singles and a lot of demanding songs that requires you to listen through the album several times before you slowly start to like them. These facts all indicate the truth of an ingenius classic. The biggest hit from this album was the slightly weird Mmm mmm mmm mmm. Ultimately, this song stand as the representative of CTD to most people today, due to its great success on hit lists, and also featuring as movie music in a lot of famous movies.
CTD never managed to make a big follow up, and so, in this day and age, God shuffled his Feet stand as the milestone in their carreer.
Death - Live in L.A. (Death & Raw)
(2001)
In their whole career, Death have been the prototype of technical and inventive death metal. Due to this, you expect a lot of a new live CD from such pioneers. The chance of being disappointed is unfortunately quite big. But not with Death! From the very first seconds of this album you're totally blown away!
First of all, they're extremely tight as a band. Death was one of the most well playing bands until its demise in 2002. Second of all, the songs. Death have a tremendous list of classics in their back-pack. When to do such an album as this, the biggest problem is to choose what songs to play. And they managed to pick all the right ones. That fact alone is worth a lot of credit.
Some might say the quality of this live recording is somewhat not the best. I agree to a certain point. When the band are playing, you can't hear the small faults and errors, but when Chuck is talking to the crowd, you can clearly hear some background noise. All though, this have never bother me at all. The music is too essential to even think the thought of the noise bothering you.
The technical standards in this band have never been questioned. And certainly not after this album. Both bass and guitar are top of the notch, but the thing I think stand out as the best, is the drums. Richard Christy might be the best metal drummer around. Such a tightness and difficult level have I never in my life seen from a death metal drummer.
All in all, this live recording from Los Angeles marks a fabulous, but still very sad ending for Death. Not long after its release, the front man, Chuck Schuldiner died from severe malignant cancer which couldn't be treated.
Rest in peace, Chuck, and be aware of the significant role you have played in so many metal loving people's lifes!
Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia received tremendous critics and sales when it was released in 2001. And it was so well deserved. PEM made Dimmu Borgir break big time in the world, and made them the biggest black metal band of all time along with Cradle of Filth.
There's really no weak chain in this piece of jewelry which this album really is. So sharp edged. So entirely brutal. So perfect. To point out favourites moments on it is almost impossible, but still, Sympozium, Indoctrination and Kings of the Carnival Creation are some of the extreme tops on this album.
A lot of old timers hate Dimmu Borgir beacause they are said to have "sold out". But from my point of view, I can see no good reason for being old school, just for that sole purpose. What's the point in everybody sounding like old Darkthrone, Mayhem, Burzum etc.? There's gotta be room for an alternative black metal that don't fit the old school genre. Development does not neccessarily mean it's bad!
In the new breed of black metal, this album stand as possibly the strongest, or at least one of the strongest pillars, no matter what you think of Dimmu Borgir compared to other old timers. If you like it or not does not matter either, because in its genre it could not possibly have been made any different.
Jeff Buckley - Mystery White Boy (live '95 ~ '96)
(2000)
Quite a obscure release. What would you say if you were handed a live recordings of a eccentric rocker with sound quality below average? Probably, you'd stack it in your CD collection, never to bother taking it out again. Just like I did. But I was wrong. Very, very wrong. 'Cause this album contains loads of amazing songs, and the eccentricity of Jeff Buckley is just so beautiful I want to cry. The lack of quality of the live recording is completely redeemed by the fact that it's so beautiful in its expression.
In the period in which this tour was done, Jeff Buckley didn't have too much songs to base the set list on. Before his death in late 1997, he had only released one studio album. Even though, it doesn't make the live album any worse. A thing that not many artists could have done.
This live recording does also represent a certain sadness. Just a year after the last recordings on this album was made, he drowned during a night off from the recording of his second album, never to be released (only as a demo-recording some years later).
Morrissey - Live At Earls Court
(2004)
Throughout his whole career, Morrissey have been one of the most essential artist in modern pop/rock, both with his band The Smiths during the 80's and as solo artist in the 90's and the new millennium. With this monumental live CD, he manage to capture the true magis of a Morrissey live show. I've also seen the actual live recording, and even with a modest live show, his personality is so big that you truly don't need anything else.
The songs are perhaps mostly selected from his newer works, but The Smiths classics like "Shoplifters of the world unite" and "Bigmouth strikes again" are included. Never-the-less, all of the songs have that extra something that makes them almost lethal critic of our society and way to think.
Morrissey is still the same romantic he's always been. Hopeless love is something he describes better than any other living artist.
I have become paralized by this unique artist and this unique album. Morrissey appears so honest and true, that if he says jump, you simply jump. The man is a icon. I think he deserves a little more credit than he's got today, because this is art! This is life!
