Various Artists: Best of Bang Your Head Festival (DVD)
Locomotive Records has just issued a double DVD set featuring some of the "best" performances from the festival across the past few years. Featuring highlights from 2001-2005 this set might find some level of interest in the mind of the discerning Metal head, but then again perhaps not. So let's talk about the selections just a little bit shall we. From DVD1 I think the performance of Mike Tramp and his new version of White Lion was awful but since I grew up with the originals maybe I am a little jaded. Doro was ok and has Chris Caffery playing some guitar, but the song was "All We Are", and almost the whole song is sung by the audience. I love it in concert but fear I am growing tired of sitting through these on videos and having them continually making sets like this. Maybe bands need to make the audience sing along a little shorter. Axel Rudi Pell might have been great but they had a terrible sound on their piece and Hirax was dreadful and made no sense including over bands like Morgana LaFay or Destruction who have played these shows and find no representation on the set. Yes there are some great performances by bands like Annihilator, Brainstorm, Sister and Dio but besides those there are very few that really stand out and hit you in the face like you would expect from a Festival of this size. Sebastian Bach and Overkill do pretty well also I have to admit. However the parts that really killed the overall enjoyment for me where the very long segments in section 2003 and 2005 that run over 45 minutes of the DVD's playing time. Its spoken commentary done as you watch people go by, or see little windows of various band & fan interactions and non-music performance clips. What killed the usually interesting comments was the fact that this was entirely in German and made me fast forward through almost all of it. With no sub-titles to read there was very little interest in my spending the time to sit through it. Maybe if I spoke a little German this would not have been the case. I have to say that this was an equal part good and bad; viewers do get 30 performance clips (with Sister getting two for some reason) and that might make a world of difference for some who like variety. For those folks there is a chance to enjoy some footage of bands that could use more exposure in the Metal world but then again they also give presence to those that I feel should simply go away. It does provide a good example on the Festival in one sense and perhaps will send the Metal adventurer over there one of these days. On that I can only close with use some level of prudence in your purchasing, unless you think I am totally wrong here.
Band Listing Motorhead
Doro
Krokus
Mike Tramp's White Lion
Axel Rudi Pell
Twisted Sister
Overkill
Hirax
Pink Cream 69
Sodom
Y&T
U.D.O.
Vicioous Rumors
Armored Saint
Six Feet Under
Uriah Heep
Dee Snider
Candlemass
Bonfire
Saxon
Death Angel
Magnum
Sebastian Bach
Axxis
Bitch
Brainstorm
Dokken
Dio
Annihilator
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Locomotive Records has just issued a double DVD set featuring some of the "best" performances from the festival across the past few years. Featuring highlights from 2001-2005 this set might find some level of interest in the mind of the discerning Metal head, but then again perhaps not. So let's talk about the selections just a little bit shall we. From DVD1 I think the performance of Mike Tramp and his new version of White Lion was awful but since I grew up with the originals maybe I am a little jaded. Doro was ok and has Chris Caffery playing some guitar, but the song was "All We Are", and almost the whole song is sung by the audience. I love it in concert but fear I am growing tired of sitting through these on videos and having them continually making sets like this. Maybe bands need to make the audience sing along a little shorter. Axel Rudi Pell might have been great but they had a terrible sound on their piece and Hirax was dreadful and made no sense including over bands like Morgana LaFay or Destruction who have played these shows and find no representation on the set. Yes there are some great performances by bands like Annihilator, Brainstorm, Sister and Dio but besides those there are very few that really stand out and hit you in the face like you would expect from a Festival of this size. Sebastian Bach and Overkill do pretty well also I have to admit. However the parts that really killed the overall enjoyment for me where the very long segments in section 2003 and 2005 that run over 45 minutes of the DVD's playing time. Its spoken commentary done as you watch people go by, or see little windows of various band & fan interactions and non-music performance clips. What killed the usually interesting comments was the fact that this was entirely in German and made me fast forward through almost all of it. With no sub-titles to read there was very little interest in my spending the time to sit through it. Maybe if I spoke a little German this would not have been the case. I have to say that this was an equal part good and bad; viewers do get 30 performance clips (with Sister getting two for some reason) and that might make a world of difference for some who like variety. For those folks there is a chance to enjoy some footage of bands that could use more exposure in the Metal world but then again they also give presence to those that I feel should simply go away. It does provide a good example on the Festival in one sense and perhaps will send the Metal adventurer over there one of these days. On that I can only close with use some level of prudence in your purchasing, unless you think I am totally wrong here.
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