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Flotsam And Jetsam - Live In Phoenix- DVD


*
=Staff's pick

DVD 1:
No Place For Disgrace
Swatting At Flies
Hard On You
Chemical Noose
Me*
Wading Through The Darkness
The Master Sleeps*
Nothing To Say
Trash*
Hammered
Secret Square
Escape From Within*
Dig Me Up To Bury Me*

DVD 2:
Candid backstage interview footage
Rare photo slide show
Exclusive web access


Genre Thrash Metal
Eric A.K. Knutson
Vocals
Tracks 13
Ed Carlson
Guitar
Runningtime 73/40 Min.
Mark Simpson
Guitar
Label Cleopatra
Jason Ward
Bass
Release 06 June 2004
Craig Nielsen
Drums
Country USA
-
Keyboards
Similar artists Anthrax, Megadeth

Flotsam & Jetsam is a great thrash band that has been living in the shadows of "the great four", and is unfairly perhaps best known for being the band that Jason Newsted left in favour of Metallica. The band debuted in 1986 with the album Doomsday For The Deceiver and has released a total of eight albums with their latest release of My God in 2001. Flotsam & Jetsam have been a really great band and one of my personal favourites, but with the last couple of albums they have started to lose their grip with albums that have been lacking in quality. But nevertheless I had great expectations on this DVD, as this was the first chance for me to actually see a live performance from the band.

They start with an old great song in the title track No Place From Disgrace from their second album and I got pretty fast disappointed. There is bad quality in practically everything on this DVD, the sound is not good and the picture quality is also bad. It is shaking and sometimes out of focus and it feels like the concert has been recorded with hand-held cameras of cheap quality, so prepare to get seasick. Unfortunately Flotsam themselves also help out, contributing to the continuing bad quality. They actually manage to destroy some of their great songs, like for example the amazing Swatting At Flies, and it hurts me like hell. An uninspired band with a vocalist that is definitely not having his best day. I don't think any of the guys had their best day, and it's no fun to either see or listen to.

It starts bad but it does slowly climbs upward as the concert goes along but it never passes any real high marks. The songs from their later albums do actually sound a lot better live than on the albums and that is something positive to point out. And the band, even though they look uninspired and stiff on stage like Megadeth, made their playing better and even somewhat good after a while. But since the vocals from Eric A.K. sound terrible all the way through it never becomes really enjoyable anyway. Normally, or on the albums at least, he has an amazing voice but here it is totally absent. This does not look or sound as a band with twenty years of thrash metal experience. Untight and lots of mistakes and a total lack of action on the stage, and where the hell is the intensity?

Another thing that falls under the category of bad quality is that the entire concert is not featured on the disc. The picture fades out after the thirteen tracks and you can tell that there is more to come. And I missed many of their songs, or...did I really? Not sure that I would really have liked to hear Suffer The Masses get massacred by Flotsam on this captured evening, but nevertheless a song of that calibre should have been represented along with other great songs that are missing. And I just cant get over this - not the entire show, HELLO? What are you thinking? A two DVD-set with not a complete concert on the first and crappy extra material on the second.

I hate to see my heroes fail, but this time it is a fact. I surely hope that their forthcoming album will restore their honour, because if they gonna continue like they've done the past years they will quickly transpire into has-beens. And exclusive web access my ass! How exclusive is it to link to the bands and the record company's website? Nothing exclusive, just links, and that after you had to install a software on your computer in order to get the links to work. And Flotsam's site definitely needs some serious work as it has the looks of the stone ages.

Production
Vocals
Compositions

2

3

7

 
Summary



3 chalices of 10 - Thomas

Related links:

www.flotsam-and-jetsam.com