Type O Negative – Symphony For The Devil

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SPV
Produced by Type O Negative

Type O Negative’s first ever DVD (not including Roadrunner’s sloppy DVD transfer of the old After Dark home video) gives an official release to the oft-bootlegged Bizarre Festival ’99 performance that was initially broadcast in its entirety on the German television station WDR. A slightly odd choice, since it therefore can’t offer anything new to many fans, but at least it will be able to offer better quality than was previous available.

The disc begins with a suitably “TV” intro featuring aerial shots of the Bizarre Festival crowd interspersed with slow-motion shots of each band member with their respective names flashing up accompanied by a metal-door-shutting sound effect. The band’s intro tape is playing in the background, so you’d expect the set to start after this, but it doesn’t. Instead it abruptly cut away from the concert to a short real of tour bus and backstage footage and clips of drunk German fans talking to the camera. It’s only saving is it comes before the concert and can be skipped.

The next chapter is indeed the concert and it’s instantly apparent that the sound is much better than the previously circulated recordings from the original TV broadcast, which was always the biggest problem with it. Following a short In The Flesh intro the band launches into Cinnamon Girl, but at the song’s conclusion it again cuts away to more back-stage tedium. Bonus footage like this is exactly that, bonus footage. To be added on at the end. It’s not part of the concert and to make it so has, as in every single case before this, ruined what could have been a superb concert DVD.

Following this second section we cut equally as abruptly into Too Late:Frozen, mid-note it seems, and the pattern continues with no more than three songs of the concert in a row, before more handycam footage ruins any momentum that may have built up. The lack of a “concert only” option in the special features compounds the situation. As an aside, the lack of music videos in the bonus features is also disappointing, but presumably unavoidable as this DVD is on SPV and none of Type O’s albums so far have been.

Don’t throw away your bootleg of the TV Broadcast. The bootleg is better because it’s uninterrupted, even if the sound is inferior.

“ ruined ”

Tracklist: In The Flesh / Cinnamon Girl / Waste Of Life Intro / Too Late:Frozen / In Praise Of Bacchus / Kill All The White People / Cornucopia / Wolf Moon (including Zoanthropic Paranoia) / Everything Dies / My Girlfriend’s Girlfriend / Are You Afraid? / Gravity / Black Sabbath Intro / Christian Women / Love You To Death / Black #1
Bonus CD: Santana Medley: Evil Ways / Oye Como Va / Black Magic Woman

Written by Andy Lye
More: Doom Metal, Gothic, Live DVDs, Type O Negative