Shadows Fall. I think most of us can agree that they are one of the best things to happen to American metal in a long time. They breathe fresh air into a genre filled with countless generic ripoff bands, who all use the same chord progressions and sound like you could have 1 singer for every single band. Shadows Fall, on the other hand, does not. They have great musicians (something not often found in American metal), and write some creative stuff.
I originally saw this DVD at one store, but didn’t buy it because I didn’t know how much it was, and I had a limit on cash. A few days later, with more money, I went to a different store to pick up a different DVD, and I saw this for $12. Naturally, being a Shadows Fall fan, I picked it up, partly because it was cheap. So, I got home, put it in, and watched it. 2 hours later (that’s the length of the DVD, give or take), I had come to this conclusion:
I could see why it was $12. Shadows Fall doesn’t deserve this.
Shadows Fall - The Art Of Touring
Released: November 15, 2005 on Century Media records
Members:
Brian Fair - Vocals
Jon Donais - Lead Guitar/Backing Vocals
Matt Bachand - Rhythm Guitar/Backing Vocals
Paul Romanko - Bass
Jason Bittner - Drums
There isn’t 1 major problem with this DVD. It suffers from quite a few different problems. But more on that later.
The good? The moments interspaced between the concert footage, of the band drunk and stupid, are admittedly funny, as most drunken moments are. Some of the things they did had me cracking up, and there were a few guest appearances, including that 1 guitarist from Killswitch Engage (the one with the huge sideburns...they painted him up as Paulie from Kiss, I think), and Max Weinburg, the drummer of the Conan O’Brien show. Why he was on there, only time will tell.
Also, the band throws in quite a few videos (6, to be exact), and while some are rather boring, some are quite cool. They do edit some parts of the songs out in some videos, but that doesn’t detract much.
Now, for the bad:
The quality. Simply put, s**t. All of the songs suffer from a cameraman who could have been 6 years old...he/they don’t know how to hold a camera, giving often horribly skewed views of the band. Sometimes, the camera doesn’t even change angles at all during the song. This wouldn’t be a problem if it was a decent camera angle, but it looks as if the cameraman was at the extreme back of the venue. You can barely see the band.
The sound quality is even worse. Again, it sounds like it was recorded by a 6 year old with a f**king Fisher-Price cassette deck. Total bootleg quality, and not even good bootleg. It holds true for all the songs, which makes the live portion of the DVD almost unwatchable, and certainly unenjoyable. The band includes a tribute to Dimebag Darrell, with a cover of Walk filmed onstage with members of Damageplan. The cover would have Dime rolling over in his grave. It’s the most godawful thing I’ve ever heard recorded.
Top that off with a horrid director, and you get this DVD. It really doesn’t do justice to Shadows Fall whatsoever. There’s even footage spliced in from the free DVD that came with The War Within. Stepping Outside The Circle and the audio portion of A Fire In Babylon come from the free DVD. The band should have rerecorded the songs, so it would at least SEEM new. Not that it would have made it any better, with the horrid quality.
Overall: A 12 year old could have done a better job with this DVD. It is saved by the backstage footage, but the whole DVD is severely flawed. It suffers from an extreme lack of polish.
Final Rating: 5.5/10. It’s a dark day for Shadows Fall fans.
I realized that this was deleted at the time when all the reviews were deleted, so this is a resubmission.
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