Crematory – Live insurrection

German gothic metal band Crematory released their first studio album way back in 1993. Their 13th was released last year, so it’s safe to say that they’ve got plenty of material to choose from for their live shows. Before the release of their last album, Monument, their clean-vocals singer Matthias Hechler left the band after 17 years in the role. He was replaced by Tosse Basler on clean vocals and rhythm guitar, and they also brought in Rolf Munkes on lead guitar. Now they’re releasing a live CD/DVD, the first live release with the new lineup.

The album was filmed/recorded at the Bang your head festival in Germany last year, and the quality is spot on – the audio really is as good as you could ask for.

Sometimes I’ll come across a band and wonder how I’ve managed to not hear them before – this is one of those occasions. Right from the first song I was blown away by how good the band are – it’s just the sort of music I love, so I’m baffled how I could have missed listening to Crematory till now, especially having been to plenty of gigs and festivals in Europe. Whatever the reason, I’m really glad I picked this up for review.

The CD is great to listen to – the sound quality is great and the music is nice and heavy and sounds best played loud enough for your neighbours to hear clearly.

The DVD was filmed with multiple cameras and has been well edited. The problem is that the festival lighting doesn’t work well with cameras – there’s too much Blue lighting in particular which never looks good on DVD no matter how well filmed it is. The picture quality is good rather than great, but the sound is spot on and the DVD does a good job of capturing the energy of the show.

While the picture quality is slightly disappointing, the price of this release isn’t much more than many CD releases, so I look on this release as a great live album with a bonus DVD thrown in.

If you haven’t listened to Crematory before then I definitely recommend you check them out, and this live release is a good place to start.

“Live insurrection” is out now.

Tracklisting:

1. Intro
2. Misunderstood
3. Fly
4. Greed
5. Tick Tack
6. Instrumental
7. Haus mit garten
8. Ravens calling
9. Pray
10. Everything
11. Instrumental
12. Shadowmaker
13. The fallen
14. Hollenbrand
15. Die so soon
16. Kommt naher