LIVE IN EINDHOVEN

Live in Eindhoven is one of a series of last efforts the deceased metal-genius Chuck Schuldiner had to raise money for his medical expenditures. Back in the late 90's he was suffering from brain cancer and, because of the high cost of the medical treatments, the way he found to raise funds for it was releasing live albums and live videos / DVDs. Unfortunately, that was not enough to raise the right amount of money, so he used other ways to do so, like taking donations from other music artists, but even so Chuck died due to the harshness of the chemotherapy.

Anyway, this live DVD, one way or the other, is a historical document. First because it has the first appearance ever of the Sound of Perseverance line-up and second because it is one of the few live documents from Death to ever see the light, even though its quality, both of image and sound, is not very good.This probably happens because the DVD was hastily produced and released. Besides, Chuck didn't had much recourses to spend with production, since he was literally fighting for his life, and that surely influenced the DVDs final result.

The sound and image problems span through the whole concert: the sound until Suicide Machine is kind of muffled and both guitars can't be heard very well. However, from Suicide Machine on, the sound quality improves drastically, despite not becoming crystal clear either. The image problems are also quite noticeable: the whole concert video quality is pretty much like one of those home-made VHS tape recordings. There are also flashes that block the image completely from time to time (I don't know where they come from, but they are there) and image distortions.

The last (and least important) problem with the DVD is Chuck's vocal technique. Though I like his vocals, in the Sound of Perseverance song context, his black metal-like screeches do not match very well with his early songs, which were sung by growling.

Grade and Final Thoughts

The live show which this DVD contains is quite good. Good set-list, very competent and passionate playing and very good band interaction overall. However, the technical problems pushes the overall quality of this live DVD down quite a bit. If everything were alright, I would give this DVD a 4 stars grade, but because of the said technical limitations, the more fitting grade would be 2.5 stars. Since there is no such grade, I'll round it up to 3 stars.