AN ODE TO WOE

My Dying Bride's second major live album sounds just a little off to me. I think part of the problem is that the crowd noise seems a little more evident here than is typical in professionally-produced live albums. Whilst I can see the point of a bit of this to help give the live ambience, usually the crowd noise gets isolated for a reason and it's just a little more intrusive here. In addition, the mix isn't what it could be, with the vocals sometimes overwhelmed. Potentially some of the issues come down to this being their first release since founding bassist Adrian Jackson left the band, replaced by Lena Abé, and with Dan Mullins on drums - so if you want to hear them in the process of gelling with a new rhythm section, that's a point of interest, but they'd do better once Abé and Mullins were settled in.