Meshuggah – Alive (DVD)

April 28th, 2010 • Rock, Video

Finally Meshuggah’s brilliance has been caught on tape! Everybody who has witnessed it will only be able to concur: in a live situation technique and compositions are just as baffling and unintelligible as on record. Their first DVD, simply titled ‘Alive’, now enables us puny humans to (re-)experience Meshuggah’s mechanical tightness. The live part consists of images shot during their North American Obzen-tour and their appearance at Loudpark festival in Tokyo. This, indeed, means that the DVD contains footage of a fair amount of songs from their latest album.

In between unbelievably perfect renditions of crushing tracks like ´Bleed’, ‘Pravus’, ‘Electric Red’ and a number of golden oldies, we are treated on bits and pieces of interviews and documentary-type footage. In these segments you become more acquainted with the band and their touring life, which in itself is quite interesting. However, when you are expecting a continuous liveshow, this format might be annoying. Especially for these people the DVD comes with an audio CD enabling you to listen to the live songs uninterruptedly.

The live images and the documentary bits are the main ingredient of this product, but every self-respecting band cannot afford not to include bonus material. So especially for us greedy consumers the music video of ‘Bleed’ and its making of are included as well as two features in which the guitar roadie tells us something about the guitars and Thomas Haake tells us a bit about his kit. All in all ‘Alive’ is a highly entertaining high-quality product, but who would have expected anything else from these mathmetal perfectionists?

-John Beaulieu

Tags: Meshuggah

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