Cant judge the quality of a DVD you havent ever seen or heard yet. The album is in no way a representation of how good the quality of the DVD is. I've never heard the album version of Lamentations but all of the DVD rips I've heard have not been quite as "powerful" sounding as TRT. This is especially true for the heavy guitars. I actually like the fact that the distortion parts are louder than the clean parts. It makes for much more effective transitions IMO.
1. When- I cant complain, this is a near flawless representation of the original, with the addition of rhythm keys. I was happy to hear that it was played much faster than it was played on the bootleg vid on youtube. It was way too slow on that one.
2. Ghost of Perdition- Great performance. Mike displays very good clean singing in this. My only beef is the lack of melotrons when the acoustic part kicks in at around 7:00. Totally minor thing though.
3. Under The Weeping Moon- God turned into a song, and it was this one. Mikael said this was the definitive version of the song, and I must agree. Orchid IMO has always been plagued with a lifeless production with very little punch, making it a pretty unaccessible listen for newbies. This performance packs a pretty big punch and makes the song heavier than I ever knew it was. The outro has now become even greater also in part to the keyboards playing the rhythm.
4. Bleak- The intro itself already doesnt live up to the album version much in part to the fact that the album version was produced with much more layering. Mikael's vocals are great, and his version of Steven Wilson's part is fuckin great. I love it. I think the acoustic section is perhaps played to fast, but I'm not Mikael, so who cares what I think.
5. Face of Melinda- I cant compare it much to the SL version, because it has a whole sound of it's own. Lots of flanger in the guitars, and it sounds pretty cool. More of a trippy sounding thing. The vocals sound wonderful. I wish Mikael would have sustained the singing more. I wasnt digging the pausing that much at first.
6. The Night And The Silent Water- Flawless performance. I just like the acoustic guitars in Morningrise much better. They have such a cold grey atmosphere to them, which I love. But back to this, vocals sound great, heavy parts are fuckin heavy.
7. Windowpane- Sounds kinda rushed at first. The snare drum sounds too hard, like Axe is playing a metal song. Very solid performance, maybe even better than the Lamentations version. This was the first time on this cd that I missed Lopez though.
8. Blackwater Park- A Fucking mazing. Cant find anything wrong with it, except that the soft section after the first set of vocals didnt sound like I hoped. After all, that was probably the first Opeth section ever to give me chills up the ass. Band intoduction is classic too.
9. Demon of the Fall- The added keyboards in the intro make it sound so fuckin evil. It reminds me of terrible winds picking up as a demon rises from hell or some shit. Highlight moment.
Conclusion- this rules. Not only do the songs live up to the album versions, in some cases they rival them.