Recently I have been revisiting Impetigo's Live Total Zombie Gore Holocaust! live album and I realized I had never watched the actual video footage from the same show. Very cool to put everything into visual context after I've only heard it so many times over the years.
Need to get the fuckin' DVD already!
Some other live things on the menu lately:
Awesome Polish black metal band who do things a little differently than the usual. This is a live EP and was recorded at a show they played with the mighty Truchło Strzygi in 2019. I think maybe @EspaDa you also showed me this band? I remember not.
This one just came out but if you like dismal sludge and can handle it very fucking raw check it out.
Need to get the fuckin' DVD already!
Some other live things on the menu lately:
Awesome Polish black metal band who do things a little differently than the usual. This is a live EP and was recorded at a show they played with the mighty Truchło Strzygi in 2019. I think maybe @EspaDa you also showed me this band? I remember not.
This one just came out but if you like dismal sludge and can handle it very fucking raw check it out.
Podgie
Young Man, Old Soul
On this subject, I've also been listening to this album as often as possible:
This album is so good it almost makes me want to start drinking again. Wynette/Parton-esque soft rockin' honky tonk soulfulness.
EspaDa
Damage Case
@CiG
Yes, I showed you that band with the beautiful name of Gruzja (Georgia in Polish). What's more, it was one of their first (if not the very first) gigs of their career. I was there. Good times before corona. 2019 I guess. Truchło Strzygi came up next and destroyed everything, kicking off the gig with "Jasna pustka". There were maybe 100 people in total. People throwing beer on the ceiling of an obscure, smelly, beer-filled venue that looked and smelled like your typical squat. Really good times. A fond reminiscence.
Yes, I showed you that band with the beautiful name of Gruzja (Georgia in Polish). What's more, it was one of their first (if not the very first) gigs of their career. I was there. Good times before corona. 2019 I guess. Truchło Strzygi came up next and destroyed everything, kicking off the gig with "Jasna pustka". There were maybe 100 people in total. People throwing beer on the ceiling of an obscure, smelly, beer-filled venue that looked and smelled like your typical squat. Really good times. A fond reminiscence.
Bloopy
Active Member
I got around to having a quick peek at these. In the context of comparing studio vs live versions, Space Ritual has practically no crowd noise and the band is quite jammy already so I'll put that one on the fence. For At Fillmore East I'm only seeing studio versions to compare for the last 2 tracks, and the live versions are jammed out much longer so it's sorta apples and oranges. I quite like the studio version of Whipping Post, but I'll admit the studio version of In Memory of Elizabeth Reed has nothing on the live version.
Anyway, it's just the way it is that studio versions have to be quite weak or different for me to prefer a live version. I still haven't thought of any metal songs where I prefer a live version. Best example of a superior non-metal live version I've got is Half Man Half Biscuit - Fuckin' 'ell It's Fred Titmus. The vocal delivery makes it sounds more comedic, the crowd helps, the song sounds a bit heavier, and it was my introduction to the song too which may have helped.
What the fuck does this even mean? The fact that the live versions are extended and jammed out is a big part of why they're better lmao.
Bloopy
Active Member
As much as I love overly long songs, I love regular length ones too. I mean they're barely even a comparable experience. One of my fav songs that got jammed out much longer live is Black Sabbath's Wicked World. But even if they didn't medley parts of other songs into it, the live version would still be a lot like listening to a different song. If extended live jams of all my fav songs existed, I'm not gonna use those versions when I'm making a playlist for my car. Even aside from the production differences, it'd make them all feel like listening to Sabbath's version of Warning. And I love Warning, but if everything was done like that I'd get bored.
Tool fans would say longer = better too, just sayin'
Tool fans would say longer = better too, just sayin'
I never said longer = better. It's not an either/or thing buddy, feel like you're missing the point here.
The possibility of songs being jammed out is just one cool gimmick of a live record. Other things are hearing a song in its stripped back nature, hearing vocalists unaided by studio trickery, a chance for passionate renditions that arise naturally rather than the rehearsed outcomes of a studio recording. Live albums have a spontaneity that is pretty unique to the format, and one of the most obvious upsides to a live album is the chance to hear songs that were recorded/written years apart played in the same context.
Then with bands that have much longer discographies you get the chance to hear renditions sung/played by band members that weren't on the original recording, which offers an entirely new reinterpretation of the song.
The possibility of songs being jammed out is just one cool gimmick of a live record. Other things are hearing a song in its stripped back nature, hearing vocalists unaided by studio trickery, a chance for passionate renditions that arise naturally rather than the rehearsed outcomes of a studio recording. Live albums have a spontaneity that is pretty unique to the format, and one of the most obvious upsides to a live album is the chance to hear songs that were recorded/written years apart played in the same context.
Then with bands that have much longer discographies you get the chance to hear renditions sung/played by band members that weren't on the original recording, which offers an entirely new reinterpretation of the song.
Bloopy
Active Member
I think you're missing my point in that I simply much prefer the results of that studio trickery and rehearsed outcomes etc. in almost all instances. That's just the way my brain is. I don't know what else to say.
No I get that point. Honestly I doubt very many people disagree with you in that studio albums are better than live albums/studio renditions are king, I was simply giving reasons why one shouldn't "happily neglect live albums" as you put it because they do have a lot of value (for the reasons I went over earlier).
This is why I think you're missing the point mate. Nobody is asking you to replace all your music with live versions...
Bloopy
Active Member
No, you were asking for recommendations of "killer" live albums and I was basically saying I'm drawing a blank on that based on my (shitty) taste. Maybe you'd been neglecting live albums for no good reason, but I only neglect them after having tried them quite a lot first and not getting so interested. I have a good handful of bootlegs downloaded too, mostly of concerts I wished I'd attended and at least one I did attend.
This is pretty essential here, being the only time Sabbath played NZ last century:
I have neglected live albums a lot but by that I mostly meant modern ones. I listen to a lot of live music from the older eras but for some reason I just never carried that over to newer music. That's all I meant.
Anyways cheers for the link, definitely going to check that out!
This album is another example of when a band's best material is live:
So fucking good.
Anyways cheers for the link, definitely going to check that out!
This album is another example of when a band's best material is live:
So fucking good.
Then I'm one of the few who strongly disagrees - at least in some specific cases, though most of them being non-metal artists. I already mentioned one of these cases in my first post in this topic, namely Mother's Finest. At least the live renditions from their Rockpalast-concert in 1978 and on their "Live"-album are far superior to the studio versions.
Another prominent example - though I don't listen much to her anymore - is Tori Amos. This live version of "Father Lucifer", in which she incorporated excerpts of "Tubular Bells" and "Small Town Boy", is IMO far better/more interesting than the studio version:
My favourite album by her is a live-bootleg (with excellent sound quality) titled "Saint and Sinner" from 1996. It's a concert where she was just accompanied by acoustic guitar, just like the concert on her official live-videotape "Live From NY" (don't know if it was ever released on DVD).
Other examples are my two favourite Norwegian live artists, Mari Boine and Kari Bremnes. In the case of the former, compare this original studio recording
to this live version (yes, I posted it recently in another topic)
and then try to explain to me why the former is better than the latter. I really do like the studio version, but this live version is far more impressive.
Or compare this original studio version (which I really do like a lot) of one of my overall favourite non-metal songs (it's from 1993)
to these live renditions from 2010
and 2018
OK, only the vocalist remained the same and the keyboard-player on the two live-renditions. And different musicians interpret songs differently, which becomes quite obvious if you compare the improvised guitar-solos in the two live versions. Personally, I prefer the version from 2010, also because of the drummer.
As far as metal is concerned, there aren't many live-recordings which impressed me. But there is one exception to the rule, namely my currently favourite "old school" metal band Lovebites. I couldn't name one single song from their studio albums I like better than the version(s) on their official live-recordings. It seems I'm one of very few people here who like them, so I'll pick one of their thrash metal songs (whose main riff reminds me of Testament's "Over the Wall" - only I like Lovebite's song better) and their only "proper" ballad to illustrate what I mean:
Studio version:
Official live version from January 2020:
Studio version:
Official live version from 2019:
Now try to explain to me why the studio versions are better! They aren't, not even production-wise.
All you'd have to do is compare an underground metal album with an underground live metal album and a lot of your points fall apart, because everything you've linked here are live shows with very high quality mainstream recordings of the shows. This kind of live production has very little downsides, essentially you get the best of both worlds; the passion and energy of a live show and the nice production of a studio album.
These attributes in combination don't exist for most live metal albums.
These attributes in combination don't exist for most live metal albums.
Metal is the context Bloopy and I were disagreeing within, so I'm just pointing out to you that most live metal albums aren't as nicely produced as your examples. Within metal, your argument doesn't hold up, Lovebites' live production is not the norm, so yes as a general rule studio metal has better production than live metal.
zabu of nΩd
Free Insultation
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Space Ritual is one of very very few live albums I listen to. I know I don't give live albums enough of a chance, but I really fucking hate being aware of the audience in any way when listening to music. It's a similar ick factor to hearing a laugh track on a TV show. There are cases when a band sounds too sterile unless they're live (Grateful Dead being the most obvious case), but in my experience that's a very rare phenomenon.
Glad I kept all my Bolt Thrower vinyl including this beast. Still one of the best live underground metal albums I've ever heard. It's also on Bandcamp if anybody is interested.
I don't really get that myself. Laugh tracks are fake as fuck but hearing an audience on a live album is nothing like that to me, they're an integral part of the live energy.
zabu of nΩd
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