Live on the Black Hand Side

Even though I?ve been a Danzig fan ever since I heard How The Gods Kill in 1992, and I absolutely love most of the stuff he put out (except of course the horrible techno cross-over record Danzig 5: Blackaciddevil) this recent effort, a double live album, is something of a two-sided affair.

First of all, the two discs are filled with cuts from no less than 3 different shows (recorded in 1992, 1994 and 2000 respectively), but far worse is the fact that none of these recordings actually rise above the quality of a rather average bootleg. Apart from the fact that poor old Glenn might not exactly be the most brilliant live singer around, most of this live record suffers from a terrible (read : "no") production and sounds as if it were just taped of the main sound-board directly and put straight on CD (which is pretty much the case I believe), including a lot of drop-outs and mistakes. Of course, this makes for a rather honest record, but it?s not really up to par with what you?re used to expect these days from a live album.

So, are there actually any good points to this disc, I hear you ask? Of course there are, it has pretty much every song you?d want to hear on there ranging from older "classics" ("Mother", "Her Black Wings") to more recent songs like "Satan?s Child", "Five Finger Crawl" and even some stuff from afore mentioned disaster "Blackaciddevil" ("7Th House" - which even sounds passable in this live version I must admit). The playing time is also well above average standards, each disc having about 60 minutes worth of music on it.

Basically, what it all boils down it is that it?s more or less a live "Best Off" suffering from a rather average sound quality, and if you are not a huge Danzig fan, it?s probably best to steer clear of this one and get his normal studio recordings. Having said that, personally, being something of a die-hard Danzig fan (and in general a lover of live albums) I did enjoy the album, but it?s about time that Glenn got his career back on track with the release of an old fashioned killer record (you know, something like How The Gods Kill, or Lucifuge). A rather generous 65 will do for this one.