2021 Live Albums

This appeared back in March this year when a prospective Conan show at the Star and Garter on June 25th was the one thing helping me get through my enforced musical celibacy. Needless to say, that the slight escalation of restrictions meant that it got Kyboshed. This was my methadone, and many an evening I would put it on and try to recall what it felt like to be immersed in a pit. This is prime Conan; slow, grinding and monumentally heavy. It has a raw under-produced feel, like it has been just ripped off the sound deck and in many ways it is beautiful. Unrefined, unrelenting, and utterly Conan.

Not a separate release by itself, this was included as a bonus disc with the special edition of Lamb of God’s self-titled seventh record. However, I have included it as it is a perfect example of a number of a strange beast in this list. A live album with no audience. This was recorded at Lamb of God’s September 2000 live stream where they played their new album in full, plus encore. So essentially this is a recording of the album just done live on stage as opposed to in a studio. It was that weird radio silence between tracks where you expect crowd noise and you just get estatic. It is obviously a passionate performance by the band but why the hell would you want to listen to this as opposed to the studio version?

Recorded just before the world went to hell in a handcart, this is Amorphis treading the boards at the very arena that they witnessed Maiden, Leppard and Whitesnake as youngsters. It offers an interesting trip through the Fin’s musical development and how they have managed to keep up the quality over thirty years.

There are 14 Motörhead live albums. This one was recorded in Germany in 2012 and you can tell that Lemmy isn’t well. They are still tremendous just because Motörhead were incapable of being anything less than tremendous. But when you have produced the definitive live album (in the shape of “No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith”) why do you need to release 13 more?

Alestorm on record are to be brutally honest a rather dull proposition, however Alestorm live are the most fun you with have with a silly hat on. They are an astonishingly entertaining romp of an act. This record captures them in full flight, and it is not unsurprising that the tracks from their last album “Curse of the Crystal Coconut” which seemed rather flat and insipid on the record actually gain a whole new lease of live here.

The pandemic rather buggered up Gamma Ray’s plans to celebrate their thirtieth year of existence. So, like many others they went the live stream route. This is a document of that stream and bizarrely sound like a hugely enthusiastic show in front of a smattering of live punters (coz that is exactly what it was). There are a few polite yelps of appreciation from crew and family and I’m not sure if that is worse than the dead silence on the Lamb of God record. Musically, it is Power Metal 101 as Gamma Ray are what Power Metal’s principal architect Kai Hansen did after he left Helloween in the late eighties. If you like rousing choruses and flamboyant keyboard flourishes, then this will be right up your street.

Another special pandemic lockdown show captured on record. There are crowd noises on here but like Premiership matches it is piped in as the show was actually recorded in an empty studio. This is a riotous and heavily dis-orderly run through of GWAR’s “legendary” Scumdogs album. It sees long departed members of the GWAR fraternity return to the fold however as they are all encased in ludicrous costumes you are not quite sure whether it is returning heroes or someone doing a rather good Sexecutioner impression. Silly, puerile, and probably won’t stand up to a second listen, but good fun all the same.

Another live stream captured for posterity (and financial gain). This one was described as a cinematic experience, whatever that is. It is true though that the versions here feel significantly different to the ones on the actually records. They feel like they are given much more room to breathe and unfold. TesseracT are a strange beast, half complex introverted tech metal machine, and half warm pop band. Here the former side of their personality most definitely takes the reigns. Songs are allowed to rachet up their intricate time-signature obsessed majestic wonder, creating a great whirlwind of sound.

Swallow The Sun’s story is not an unfamiliar one. Last March they set out on a European tour to mark twenty years of what they self-deprecatingly called Gloom, Beauty and Despair. They made it as far as one solitary show in Helsinki before the world turned upside down. This is the show captured to show all of us outside of Finland what Corona had made us miss. The performance is divided into two distinct halves, the first is an acoustic rendition of the song part of “Songs from the North” and second component is fan voted tracks from across their impressive back catalogue. Now I love Swallow the Sun, so I was going to always be inclined towards this record, but it really is magnificent. The acoustic section is lush and string drenched, whilst the electronic half illustrates beyond doubt that they make the most wonderful swirling emotive intelligent Metal. Sumptuous.

Yet another live stream released as a live record and this one is sadly in the pretty pointless pile. At their live stream from Milan in 2020, Italy’s premiere Goth Metal band exclusively played tracks from their news record “Black Anima” so that is all that is on this live album. It is so polished, and studio enhanced that you might as well be listening to the actual album. Completely and utterly pointless.

Live stream live album number 467, however this feels a little different. Paradise Lost did not try and pretend they were playing an actual concert, instead they leaned into the fact they were playing a disused desolate mill just outside Huddersfield. Paradise Lost can sometimes be the sound of all the joy leaving the world and that was the Paradise Lost that came out to play when playing this “show”. They embraced the darkness and the depression and created a haunting and morose experience. Along so many of the other live stream albums on this list, this record works because they are not directly replicating what is on record. If there is no live audience to create the ambience and atmosphere you must think of a different way to do so and Paradise Lost achieve that by slowing everything down and enhancing the miserable. Really really really good.

Norway’s premiere Black Prog band, they are never ones to do things by halves. So instead of one stream they did a stream tour, playing online in multiple venues across Norway and entitled the Cinematic it saw them air almost the entire back catalogue. Here are four of the shows captured on record. Very much one for the collector, there is still an air of the unique here. Already lengthy tracks are stretched out even further and there is a real air of “special” about all four performances.