You know what the funny thing is? Before I did this review I was on the way home from a fellow poster and reviewer's house thinking "man, isn't it funny how there are no such things as decent live records, there's just amazing ones, and the rest are embarrassments to music and humankind?" You could not even believe how relieved I am that this falls into the former category. Unreal.
My gripe with live records mainly has to do with the fact that the modern live record was pretty much invented as stop-gap fodder for labels to make money while their superstars recovered from being alcoholics or whatever. Even many of the ones put out with honesty are just sad. One of metal's most famous examples is Grave's "Extremely Rotten Live." It's just notoriously hard to match the atmosphere of a live record to the studio recordings that made it possible. In the end, if you can afford to do a video instead of just recording a live set, do it. That's 90% of the experience right there...
Anyway, the point of the previous paragraph was a setup to this punchline: Morgoth are an exception to the rule with "Cursed To Live." I love this band with all my heart. They were (for a while) everything that was right with death metal.
The set from Way Of Darkness Fest in 2011 isn't exactly the best quality of recordings, but what it captures is the stuff that most producers wish they could capture for a live record. Namely, a passionate, accurate performance, and to boot, killer guitar tones. Morgoth seriously just rips through these songs with no remorse, and doesn't even seem to get tired. I was nervous that by the time they got to my favorite song, Isolated, it would sound forced and exhausted. Not the case at all. Vocalist Marc sounds even better than he does on the old records, and the band play with machine-like precision, without sounding lifeless. They even avoid their controversial "Feel Sorry For The Fanatic", to my happiness.
The version I received for review has two different sets, and while both are spot on awesome, I cannot immediately find any information on the second, but it sounds like it was from around the same time. If you can pick this version up, I recommend it.
Staff Rating
4.50/5
User Rating
0/5
