Live On The Black Hand Side
Danzig
•
January 25, 2002
Even though I've been a Danzig fan ever since I heard How The Gods Kill in 1992, and I absolutely love most of the stuff he put out (except of course the horrible techno cross-over record Danzig 5: Blackaciddevil) this recent effort, a double live album, is something of a two-sided affair.
First of all, the two discs are filled with cuts from no less than 3 different shows (recorded in 1992, 1994 and 2000 respectively), but far worse is the fact that none of these recordings actually rise above the quality of a rather average bootleg. Apart from the fact that poor old Glenn might not exactly be the most brilliant live singer around, most of this live record suffers from a terrible (read : no) production and sounds as if it were just taped of the main sound-board directly and put straight on CD (which is pretty much the case I believe), including a lot of drop-outs and mistakes. Of course, this makes for a rather honest record, but it's not really up to par with what you're used to expect these days from a live album.
So, are there actually any good points to this disc, I hear you ask? Of course there are, it has pretty much every song you'd want to hear on there ranging from older classics (Mother, Her Black Wings) to more recent songs like Satan's Child, Five Finger Crawl and even some stuff from afore mentioned disaster Blackaciddevil (7Th House - which even sounds passable in this live version I must admit). The playing time is also well above average standards, each disc having about 60 minutes worth of music on it.
Basically, what it all boils down it is that it's more or less a live Best Off suffering from a rather average sound quality, and if you are not a huge Danzig fan, it's probably best to steer clear of this one and get his normal studio recordings. Having said that, personally, being something of a die-hard Danzig fan (and in general a lover of live albums) I did enjoy the album, but it's about time that Glenn got his career back on track with the release of an old fashioned killer record (you know, something like How The Gods Kill, or Lucifuge).
A rather generous 6.5 will do for this one.
6 / 10
Had Potential
"Live On The Black Hand Side" Track-listing:
Disc 1
Godless
Left Hand Black
How The Gods Kill
Dirty Black Summer
Pain In The World
Evil Thing
Halloween Ii
Not Of This World
Killer Wolf
Little Whip
Going Down To Die
Bringer Of Death
Stalker Song
Long Way Back From Hell
Disc 2
Satans Child
7Th House
Five Finger Crawl
Unspeakable
Lilin
Her Black Wings
It's Coming Down
Do You Wear The Mark
Untill You Call On The Dark
Deep
Belly Of The Beast
She Rides
Twist Of Cain
Mother
Danzig Lineup:
Glenn Danzig - vocals
John Christ - guitars (CD1)
Eerie Von - bass (CD1)
Chuck Biscuits - drums (CD1)
Todd Youth - Guitars (CD2)
Howie Pyro - Bass (CD2)
Joey Castillo - drums (CD1 on tracks 9 and 14 / CD2)
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