Intense Live Series Vol.2

Well well well, by now you might think that I am being really harsh against this album. This is not an album if I start from that. This is an utter shit, plain and simple.

Let me elaborate: Intense Records had the great idea (whose idea was I’d like to know to send him/her to the corner with a dumb hat) of putting out some supposedly live albums from some of their catalogue bands. What was the idea behind it? It is beyond me. Let me tell you why: these albums are NOT concert live recordings. They are more like rehearsals to proof…I have no idea to proof what! But they do sound like rehearsals.

Here is the other great idea, and I am guessing that Terry Taylor must have thought: ’’hey, let’s put Les Carlsen from Bloodgood to sing with them!’’ Les Carlsen my friends, the awesome singer from Bloodgood, which style completely differs from Tourniquet’s was blend together to try to sing speed metal or even thrash. At this point I’d like to have Terry Taylor in front just to spit on his face for such stupid idea. If you do not know by now who Les Carlsen is, let me compare him: put Michael Sweet from Stryper to sing with Kreator, or even better, put Britney Spears to sing with Epica and you get the idea. How in this world was that even thought by Terry goes beyond my deepest imagination.

Of course Les Carlsen does his job with his band, more than ok I have to say but in this case he falls short due to the heaviness of the music. For instance, the Trouble cover, sung by Gary Lenaire is well done. They maximized the potential of the already powerful song and in here, the driving riff takes the song to the next level. ‘The Messiah’ by Bloodgood themselves is beautifully performed as well. It is now a doom metal song reaching some heaviness that was impossible to Bloodgood. In here, Les’ vocals match perfectly; despise the new levels of depth throughout the song.

Phantom Limb (putting aside the vocals which we already know don’t work here) is really good, although not outstanding, but IT IS a kick ass song to listen to anyway. ‘Ark of suffering’ and ‘Stereotaxic’ do not match. They obviously put them together because of the lyrical topics (for further details go to the original albums’ reviews) but the problem here is that the first song kicks ass but the second one simply pales in comparison.

‘Whitewashed tomb’ is an awesome instrumental (the original I mean) but here I detect some production and mixing problems which take away the punch and crunch the original song had. Maybe it is just me but I can’t help feeling that. Finally, so to say, we have ‘The skeezix dilemma’ which again, suffers a lot from this production problem and specially here due to the vocals. Les Carlsen simply does not have the power or even a single growl that can reach the creepy and dark atmosphere from the original.

Do I need to continue? If you see the set list you can simply say: ‘’hey, they are stealing money from me by trying to sell me an album with only 6 songs with a singer that DOES NOT fit the music’’. If you think this you are right! Don’t ever buy even if you find it on an auction, or a foreclosure or garage sale. The only reason I can think of is charity, and that is saying a lot because this aberration can be thrashed all away. It is more intense a fart by any metal head than this nonsense.