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Review: Evergrey - A Night to Remember
Evergrey
www.evergrey.net
A Night to Remember

Label: Inside Out Music
Year released: 2005

Rating: 4.5/5

Review online: December 31, 2007
Reviewed by: Michel Renaud
Readers Rating
for:
A Night to Remember

Rated 4/5 (80%) (12 Votes)
Review

I got this promo DVD back in mid-2005 and recoiled in horror when I looked at the back of the case:  DVD 1: Live show.  OK, that's cool.  DVD 2: 6.5 hours of extras.  What?  Hey, I have a day job.  Only now did I find the courage to put myself through this, and even then had to skip on a few extras (a video is a video, right?)  The live show was filmed in Gothenburg, Sweden.  The set is pretty dark and made me feel a little claustrophobic: Even though the stage appears to be of a rather large size, the way this is filmed sometimes makes it feel like the band members are playing in a 2 square-meter box, and that you're standing right in their face.  Occasionally you get a wider view that gives you some breathing room.  The image and sound are excellent, not always the case for "smaller" bands like Evergrey, where a smaller budget often forces a cheaper, more amateurish production - definitely not the case here.  The performance is very intense, and the crowd is just nuts from beginning to end, creating a great live atmosphere while watching the show.  I'm not too familiar with Evergrey, and watching this I couldn't help but think that they'd be better without the occasionally overbearing keyboards and all the female backing vocals.  But this is not an album review so... :)

DVD 2 contains the aforementioned abundance of extras.  I don't know about you, but I think 6.5 hours for a band with a rather short history (10 years at the time) is overdoing it a little.  Of course die hard fans of the band will eat this up and ask for more (and probably call in sick to work so they can actually watch the whole damn thing.)  The interviews are quite in depth, many of the questions being from fans from around the world, which is a nice touch since some of the questions are a departure from what a journalist would usually ask.  There's an interview with the whole band, but also interviews with the individual band members - this is definitely an interesting approach that more bands should adopt when including interviews on their DVDs.  This is the most interesting part of this second DVD.  The "gear talks" are more of the shaky amateur video style and almost made me sea-sick. :)  This will be mostly of interest to musicians.  The mixing school is also an amateur video, where they explain how they go about recording.  The E-TV Cribs is a tour of the studios, again a shaky amateur video.  Some good parts in all of this stuff, but after watching a few of these from various bands, it's hard to find something you haven't seen before.  The backstage stuff is also a collection of amateur videos, some dating back to 1996, with the characters speaking in Swedish, but English subtitles are provided.  I couldn't go through all of this stuff - it's not all that interesting (and often downright retarded) except maybe for some fans of the band.  Finally you get six videoclips, which I also skipped due to exhaustion.

So, we get an excellent show and more extras than a normal human can handle.  I think only die hards will bother watching all the extras - not all of them are worthy of the casual fan's time.  Sure thing is, with that amount of material, one cannot say he's not getting enough for his money.


More about Evergrey...
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Review: Recreation Day (reviewed by Christopher Foley)
Review: Solitude Dominance Tragedy (reviewed by Larry Griffin)
Review: The Dark Discovery (reviewed by Christopher Foley)
Review: The Inner Circle (reviewed by Larry Griffin)
Review: The Storm Within (reviewed by Bruno Medeiros)
Review: Torn (reviewed by Christopher Foley)
Review: Torn (reviewed by Larry Griffin)
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