Mob Rules – Signs of The Time LIVE

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This live DVD and CD set is a document of the German melodic metallers’ recent, and most successful, European tour supporting their fourth full-length album Among The Gods.

The first live output from the German power metal outfit is not a success. The band play brilliantly, and sound fantastic. The show even looks like it was fantastic. But watching it on this DVD is truly headache-inducing stuff. Suffering greatly from over-editing, the shot-changes are too quick. You don’t get to stick with the same camera for more than about a second. And when it changes, 50% of the shots are really strange angles from underneath a guitar, behind the drummer’s left elbow or looking up the singer’s nose. Watching this DVD feels like a theme park ride where you’re being spun and twisted upside down the whole time.

This is a real shame. Mob Rules are an excellent band, with first class songs. And on this recording they put on a flawless show, sounding every bit as good as they do on their studio CDs. The DVD comes with a bonus live CD of the show, containing every song from the DVD, and this is an absolutely exhilarating piece of work. Song wise you get all the best tracks from Among The Gods, including Black Rain and Hydrophobia and classic tracks from the previous three efforts including Temple Fanfare, Hallowed Be Thy Name and the legendary The End of All Days.

For Mob Rules fans, and fans of any power or melodic metal for that matter, this package is worth purchasing for the CD alone, but the DVD is painful in the extreme. If the CD is ever released on it’s own then it is a compulsory purchase for all metal fans, but currently, it comes in a bigger box with a free coaster.

“ headache-inducing ”

Tracklist: Making Of/Intro / Black Rain / Lord of Madness / Celebration Day / Hydrophobia / Outerspace / Unknown Man / Among The Gods / The End of All Days / Hallowed Be Thy Name / The Speed of Light / (In the Land of) Wind And Rain / Temple Fanfare / Pilot of Earth / Rain Song / Outro/After Show
Bonus Features: Wacken Roadshow 2004 / Wacken 2000 On Stage & Interview / Mob Rules History / Black Rain (Official Video Clip) / Black Rain (Video Director’s Cut) / End of All Days (Wacken Roadshow)
CD contains all songs from the main concert feature without the intro and outro.

Written by Andy Lye
More: Live DVDs, Power Metal, Mob Rules