Primal Fear – Live In The USA

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Recorded on dates during their 2009 US tour this is the second live release from Germany’s Primal Fear, but the first to be issued on a stand-alone CD as well as with the partner DVD. Previous DVD A History of Fear included a live CD, but that was never released on its own. To get a comprehensive picture of Primal Fear’s career in a live format, both discs are necessary however. Live In The USA should really have been a double album, but as it stands the single disc is too heavily weighted towards recent albums 16.6 (Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead) and New Religion, accounting for half of the album’s tracks between them. The other half come from four of the previous six albums, with Seven Seals and Black Sun being completely overlooked, even though the setlists of the shows used for this album contained songs from both. The songs, and order, chosen for the CD exactly matches the setlist played at one of the shows, in Los Angeles but when recording at least three shows, changing the setlists on different nights to give two CD’s worth of material would have meant a less one-sided album. The sound quality is excellent, and there’s no audible sign at all that the set is made up of recording from three different shows, but the failure to draw from the band’s whole back catalogue certainly lessens the interest to anyone other than attendees of the 2009 US tour. But for what it is, this is a good live album.

Written by Andy Lye
More: Heavy Metal, Live Albums, Quick.Play Reviews, Primal Fear