Review Summary: Bayside releases a live album. That’s right; Victory Records is up to their old tricks again!
Victory Records has been a blessing and a curse for the music industry; signing bands like Bayside, Between the Buried and Me, Silverstein, and uhmm…any other band besides Aiden is an example of the blessings. What’s the curse? Well, that would be Victory Records overwhelming desire to have their bands churn out albums, regardless of quality.
New York band Bayside is no exception to the Victory Records formula, releasing two different CDs on the same day; one of those being the studio album “Shudder”; the other being “Live at the Bayside Social Club”. It seemed like a great time to be a Bayside fan. Unfortunately, Live at the Bayside Social Club turns out to be little more than an attempt to cash in on the band’s growing popularity.
To put it bluntly, the album is a boring and tedious mess. The set list, while composed of good songs, doesn’t contain any surprises, no encore, etc.; just the same old Bayside songs you’ve heard before. The only difference is, the songs are actually more exciting and of a higher quality on the studio versions.
The biggest contributor to this is Anthony Raneri, lead vocalist, whose voice is wildly uneven throughout the record. At rare times, Raneri’s voice can be genuinely moving, such as on the mostly acoustic song “Don’t Call Me Peanut”. On the majority of tracks though, his voice goes through a pattern of cracking, strengthening, and then cracking again. If you have not guessed, this can make for a rather unpleasant listening experience.
As far as instrumentation goes; the performance sounds far more distorted than it should. Yes, Bayside has always used heavy distortion; but when listening to the record, the songs turn into a muddy and difficult to distinguish mess. And you remember those great guitar solos in “The Walking Wounded”? Well guess what, they’re completely unremarkable here.
What kills this album the most is simply the fact that it’s not interesting. There is little crowd interaction between Raneri and the fans, no improvisations to songs, and some horrible production. While a live album should not necessarily be produced to sound better; there should be flow, and this album has next to none. About half the time, the songs cut directly to other songs, with noticeable audio continuity problems. That is just a bad, bad idea on the producer’s part.
To be fair, this album isn’t completely a loss. “Don’t Call Me Peanut” and “Devotion and Desire” do bring some life to it; but on a whole, Live at the Bayside Social Club comes off as a disappointment. Raneri and Bayside both have talent; it’s just a shame that they showcase themselves so poorly here.
