U.D.O. - Nailed To Metal

*=Staff's pick	Holy Raiders Of Beyond Midnight Mover* Independence Day Metal Eater* Winter Dreams Shout It Out Cut Me Out I'm A Rebel* Extramaterial: Biography Discography Photogallery Websitelinks 10 videoclips 7 previously unreleased audio tracks

Genre	Heavy Metal	Udo Dirkschneider	Vocals
Tracks	9	Stefan Kaufmann	Guitar
Runningtime	255 Min.	Igor Gianola	Guitar
Label	AFM Records	Fitty Weinhold	Bass
Release	12 Sept. 2003	Lorenzo Milani	Drums
Country	Germany	-	Keyboards
Similar artists	Accept, Vanize

Finally also U.D.O. release a Dvd with a liveconcert and extramaterial that are supposed to serve as "the complete history" according to the cover. A diehard fan as I am of this giant of metal, I immediatly threw myself over the piece of plastic as soon as it was released, and have now let it spin more than a few times. I have to say I am a bit disappointed.

This could have been so, so, so much better than it is. Since the music should be well known for every person that claim to be into metal, I won't go much into the musical aspects of this, but instead concentrate on the package as a whole and what you get and how it has been produced. Of course the songs are smashing but since I know for a fact that the Live In Russia cd that was released the other year contained enough material for a double live, than I find it remarkable that we only get 9 songs on this release. It does not feel like a real concert as time doesn't allow the right feeling to come.

The songs that in included are good, I won't say anything about that, even though I think that a song like Cut Me Out does not have anything to do here if there are only 9 songs present. Another, probably the biggest, factor that drag down the grades are the way the concert is being filmed, cut and produced. I get extremely annoyed and restless(not wild, though) when watching this as it is almost constantly in either slowmotion, weird closeups, brown/gray, flashing green and so on. It sometimes reminds of those japanese videos from the 80's that could drive you nuts by filming everything else but the important stuff. Very bad.

The rest of the dvd contains behind the scene-material, and also here it could have been much better. The material is extensive and we get to follow the band on the train, bus, downtown and before the shows but - without almost any sound or comments from the guys themselves. There is constantly a song by U.D.O. running in the background and that is of course nice, but when we finally get to follow their life on the road, I think the least we could ask for is to be able to hear them talk and discuss something every once in a while. A big minus. The material is not even that overly interesting, as they mostly walk around making faces and fool around. The most spectacular scene is when we get to follow Mr. Dirkschneider himself during a skydiving jump. He is kind of cute in that hat he wears, not to mention the coolness he shows afterwards.

Apart from this we get a pretty useless biography containing some pages of text, the usual discography, and also some videos and tv appearances from the earlier days. Some of them are fun and good from a nostalgic perspective, some of them are just humor on a high level, seeing the clothing and the movements on stage. One interesting video is from when Udo recorded guest vocals on song for the russian band Aria, and he sings it entirely in russian. Heart Of Gold comes in three different versions - the video, the making of the video and from a tv show. The song itself is great and one of the best, but it feels like at least one version too much. Why not expand the liveshow instead, damn it?

What we also get is 7 unreleased audiotracks, of which 5 of them are demoversions of songs that was later released on Solid, No Limits and Holy. It is interesting to hear how Recall The Sin from the album Holy sounds almost nothing like the ready version, and also to hear the bonussong The Key which is a great song and could easily fit on No Limits instead of certain other songs on the same album. This pretty good section of the dvd does unfortunatly not save the whole impression.

Like I earlier mentioned: the music we get is of course great, but I don't think it's worth the money since it's badly shot and the rest of the material is very mediocre. The 255 minutes playing time - over 4 hours - could have been filled up in a much better and insteresting way, if you ask me. I would not nag if it would have contained a bit more music either....

(Personally I hope that Udo is cutting down on all the smokes he seem to devour with delight. Almost every scene ends with him draggin up that package and firing up a bad boy. Hold it back, Udo! We want you to be on stage for many, many years to come...)

Production	Vocals	Compositions
5	8	4,5

Summary
4 chalices of 10 - Tommy