Alive albums are always the celebration of Metal music. I mean, Metal bands live to play alive, to have gigs, to have the opportunity to share their music with other fans. As Deena Weinstein said the show is the happening for Metal bands. I, myself, love them. I have great memories of the first alive albums I heard when I was a teenager. Most of them are still in my mind. I love them so much that this is the second Cirith Ungol alive album that I have the opportunity to review. The first was 2019’s “I’m Alive,” an album that was a celebration of the past life the band had and also an opportunity to make peace with their unsung past. If they are celebrated now, it is true that back then they did not receive the same celebration. It was the opposite. Weird was the lightest word people used to refer to them. Once a critic said they were the worst metal band ever. Time heals, they say.
Here we’ve got “Live at the Roxy,” an album with the promise to be their last alive album as they announced their retirement from the stages in the end of 2024. As I said before I am a huge fan of the band. A passion that started back then in the 1980’s curiously after me reading the article that said they were the worst Metal band ever. As a teenager I had to chek it out. By a quirk of circunstance, a friend of mine got their two albums “Frost and Fire” and “King of the Dead.” Weird music was my initial impression, but the instrumentals and Tim Baker’s very personal voice got me. The rest is history.
Now some info about “Live at the Roxy.” As its tittle says it was recorded in one of the world’s most iconic music venues, the Sunset Strip’s Roxy Theatre, a place where they played previously, on another landmark occasion on January 19th, 1983, with Bitch, Malice and Pandemonium, the four bands from “Metal Massacre 1,” which was released the previous year. So, the decision to record it there was easy. As the press release says “[t]he one-night-only performance was an album release show for the band’s 2023’s ‘Dark Parade.’ It captured the lineup at the height of its considerable powers, performing the album in its entirely, along with a set of classic songs including ‘Join the Legion,’ ‘Frost and Fire,’ ‘Black Machine’ and ‘Atom Smasher.’ The end result is a stellar live album and DVD, band co-founder and drummer Rob Garven saying, “I think we are playing better now than we did back in the day, circa ‘King of the Dead.’ Onstage I wear in-ear monitors and have felt tears in my eyes when the music sounds so accurate to what we recorded so many years ago!”
Well, I totally agree with drummer Rob Garven. The songs were perfomed with lots of accuracy and care keeping the old flame high except for some guitar solos that were not loyal to the originals. “Live at the Roxy” captures a band at its apex after the long self-inflicted hiatus. It is so worth it.
Cirith Ungol “Live at the Roxy” will be released on April 25th via Metal Blade Records.
Track Listing:
01. Velocity (S.E.P.) [Live]
02. Relentless (Live)
03. Sailor on the Seas of Fate (Live)
04. Sacrifice (Live)
05. Looking Glass (Live)
06. Dark Parade (Live)
07. Distant Shadows (Live)
08. Down Below (Live)
09. Atom Smasher (Live)
10. I’m Alive (Live)
11. Frost and Fire (Live)
12. Black Machine (Live)
13. Blood and Iron (Live)
14. Chaos Descends (Live)
15. The Frost Monstreme (Live)
16. Fire (Live)
17. Death of the Sun (Live)
18. Master of the Pit (Live)
19. King of the Dead (Live)
20. Join the Legion (Live)
Watch “Down Below” official live video here:
Source: metaladdicts.com
