ENTOMBED

If you've followed ENTOMBED's legendary career at all, and even if you haven't, it's a good bet you've heard about "Unreal Estate". Choreographers Bogdan Syzber and Carina Reich thought it would be a good idea for ENTOMBED to perform its trademark death n' roll with more than 30 ballerinas at Stockholm's Royal Opera Hall. The result was a 45-minute performance (the CD is 38) on March 1, 2002 of ENTOMBED playing rearranged songs, many from "Uprising" and "Morning Star", with said ballerinas. METALLICA eat your heart out, eh?

The only problem is that without the visual experience of the performance, you're left with an exceptionally well recorded ENTOMBED live set sprinkled with keyboard parts, tape loops ("It Is Later Than You Think") and polite, though enthusiastic, audience applause. Being an ENTOMBED fan, the problem for me is a relatively minor one. Besides, apparently there are plans for a DVD, and the digipack version of the disc includes a picture book detailing all aspects of the performance (rehearsals included).

After the soothing piano work of "DCLXVI/Intermission", the sound quality of "Chief Rebel Angel" hits like a ton of bricks. The mix is simply incredible and you won't find an overdub anywhere! The now familiar down-tuned Sunlight guitar sound is simply monstrous here, as are the beefy bass lines, crackling drums, and L.G.'s somewhat Tom Araya-like vocals (at least on this album). This is not a greatest-hits package, nor was it intended to be, and if you're an ENTOMBED fan it's rather refreshing. Taken as an excellent live recording of the band performing songs like "Say it in Slugs", "Mental Twin", "Night of the Vampire", "In the Flesh", and "Left Hand Path" (outro) it would be hard for ENTOMBED fans to go wrong by purchasing this disc. Song twists aside, you probably shouldn't expect much more than that though. The DVD could very well receive a rating of 9 or 10. The CD will get a respectable 7.5.