We're Going to Hollywood for This - Live Perversions

Carpathian Forest is a Norwegian black metal band with punk and rock 'n' roll influences that still retain ¨true¨elements of the genre like tremolo picking and reach-for-all-possible-cans drumming style, along with shrieked vocals, corpsepaint, and lots of satanic imagery.

The main DVD feature is a 60' gig in Krakow shot at the same polish studio in which most Metal Mind DVDs are recorded with a live audience brought in to effect. The performance oozes so much energy it is as if a nuclear bomb explodes in your living-room. The double kick-drums reach very low and sound dry, yet still packing a lot of punch. In true BM fashion, the bass guitar is mega-trebley and can only be heard on the rare occasions it plays solo like on intros and breaks, the rest of the time merely following the melodic line of the guitars. Nattefrost vocals rank among the best in the genre in my opinion, so it is a pity they are so buried in the mix. Sound is excellent if a tad low so you will need a juicy amp or sensitive speakers to be able to crank this puppy to realistic levels (mega-loud of course !)

Camerawork is fantastic; there are like 9-10 cameras, including a crane one and the editing is simply perfect. Picture bitrate peaks at over 8 Mbps but sinks way below the ¨crap zone¨ (3.5 Mbps) so upscaling those segments did present difficulties for the player and screen. The dvd is like 100' in duration and the mastering should have taken advantage of the 7.95 GB DL DVDs offer, but instead of that just 5.81 Gb was used. In spite of that,the picture is excellent, with vibrant colors and perfect contrast; rarely have I seen better.

Sound is MASSIVE; the band plays fast with little interaction with the audience and squeezes 15 songs in one hour. The naked, fat middle-aged dancers will be a shock to the uninitiated, but only put a smile on the face of this veteran fan. Guitars are super high in the mix and have a killer tone, trebley but crunchy at the same time, the only downfall being the guitarist on the left channel sounds ten times quieter than the lead axe on the right, a common occurrence in this kind of mixes, but given the fact that the guy with the Les Paul plays most of the stuff most of the time, I would have panned him more evenly across the stereo landscape. On certain songs the weaker guitar -which BTW gets almost no camera exposure leaps to life, making the volume to skyrocket. It is a joy to listen to the twin attack; it is just a pity this could have not been maintained throughout the whole gig. There is a 5.1 mix if you are into that sort of sound, which I am not.

There is an additional daytime Wacken set as a bonus, on which the sound is very good too; as a matter of fact I enjoyed the higher vox in the mix. Same guitar imbalance, but there are 3 songs not present on the main feature, and the others sounded like completely different versions, so I was in BM hell. There is also an old self-titled video clip and the rest of the bonus are mostly unrealesed audio demos, bio, wallpapers and the like, not worth my while really. I loved the interview, though.

Cliched to say I know, but a must have for any BM fan with a black palate .

Originally written for amazon.com bu yours truly.

I discovered this DVD off eBay. At first I was reluctant to buy it because I was only a moderate Carpathian Forest fan at the time, and I wanted to be sure it would be worth it to me if I bought it. Some time passed and I got more and more into the band, and decided to go for it. I didn’t regret it at all; it’s my favourite music DVD and I’ve watched it countless of times.

The DVD contains quite a bit of content. A 19-song set list (unless you don’t count the intros); bonus audio that contains tracks from their demos, Defending the Throne of Evil preproduction, and some live tracks; bonus video that includes a video of Carpathian Forest (the song, which is essentially a music video), a bunch of bootlegs and another concert of eight songs (Wacken Open Air 2003), and a thing titled “untitled” which is just useless; an extras section that includes discography, photo galleries, links and a short interview.

The main concert itself is the best part of the DVD. It was the first time I had ever seen a black metal show with good production and camerawork. One thing I enjoy a lot about Carpathian Forest is they produce their material well; if I’m going to listen to music, I want to hear it. Anyway, the concert is awesome. As mentioned before, it has great production and was mixed very well. The camerawork is top-notch. No stupid tricks or inverting colours or whatever. The angles were perfect and I was able to see the whole band (and shots of the crowd at times) and each individual member. Of course, most of the time the camera was focused on Nattefrost, but that is to be expected.

The set list of the concert is superb. They played a few of my favourites (Mask of the Slave, Return of the Freezing Winds, Sadomasochistic, I Am Possessed) and provided a good mix with all their albums, even throwing in some bonus tracks. One thing I noted about the concert is they opened with a song from their first album (Sadomasochistic), as opposed to a song from their latest album. Most bands do the opposite, and I was happy to see Carpathian Forest didn’t fall into that pattern. Another thing I liked about the concert was the dancers. I know, they’re ugly and fat and whatever, but they were hilarious. At times it looked as if they didn’t know where they were, and were just wandering around aimlessly. In any case, it added to the entertainment for me. They only come out for two songs (Sadomasochistic and Mask of the Slave), so if you don’t like them, don’t worry they aren’t around long.

The flow of the concert went well, and it felt like a live performance. It didn’t feel like an over-produced music video that was an hour long. The stage presence of the band members wasn’t huge, but there wasn’t much to expect anyway. Nattefrost did a good job of being “grim”, and the other members did the usual, like head bang and whatnot. I liked how they threw in the Nuclear Fucking Death Machine song. Apparently it only appears on the DVD, and their intro to it was great. “This song is dedicated to us”. I thought that was awesome. Overall it was a very enjoyable live performance. I only wish they played Ancient Spirit of the Underworld, but you can’t have everything. They finished strong with Knokkelmann and Bloodlust and Perversion.

The other sections of the DVD are meant for the hardcore fans. I’m a huge fan of Carpathian Forest, and they’re perhaps my favourite black metal band, but I wouldn’t go as far as classifying myself as a hardcore fan. The demo tracks included aren’t bad. They’re a good listen if again, you’re a hardcore fan and you’d just like to hear some of the songs recorded “back in the day”. The live tracks are a nice touch, though I personally prefer to watch a live performance than just simply listening to some live tracks.

The Carpathian Forest video clip is essentially just a music video for the song. The quality is good and it’s just basically them performing with some camera tricks and other added footage edited in. It’s worth taking a look at, anyway. The recording of Defending the Throne of Evil shows the various members of the band recording parts for the album. I especially liked it when Nattefrost threw the Devil’s horns while recording. I thought it was a nice touch. The rare live bootlegs are of exceptional quality for bootlegs. They were recorded with what appears to be a simple hand-held camera, but the sound quality is quite nice, and the picture is relatively clear. The performances were recorded back when Nattefrost also played guitar along with singing.

The Wacken Open Air 2003 section is sweet. It’s practically another concert that’s eight songs. Again, the quality is great, and the camerawork is awesome; wide angles and all the band members were clearly visible. I’d definitely recommend checking that out that part of the DVD as well. The songs played are pretty strong too (Mask of the Slave, One With the Earth, Black Shining Leather). The untitled part is not even worth mentioning. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to signify or why they decided to include it. It’s totally pointless.

The interview is a short interview with Nattefrost and the Carpathian Dancers. He talks about black metal, death metal and related topics. The interview is rather short, and is nothing to get excited about. There is also a discography section, biography of the band (grimly written, might I add) which also goes into detail about the appearances of the band members including Nordavind. Other sections include desktop images, photo galleries and links; stuff that most people would bypass but if you love Carpathian Forest than I’d recommend at least taking a look.

You can also view the DVD in Dolby Digital 2.0 or 5.1 surround sound. I have surround sound in my room, and believe me, it makes a difference, especially if you turn the volume up.

In conclusion I’d recommend the DVD to big Carpathian Forest fans and new fans alike. There’s a lot of material on this DVD that spans their entire career, so it has something for everyone. For the price, it has everything you could want in a music DVD save for some music videos. Despite that small setback, it’s a great DVD and highly recommended. With a DVD like this, I’m looking forward to their next one.

Carpathian Forest have yet to disappoint me with their music. Maybe, for this reason, they should stick to the music. I was shocked by this DVD, but not to a point of absolutely loathing it. The musicians are not fully to blame for the many faults in this DVD.

The concert was the biggest downfall. Carpathian Forest came out with all the effort possible. However, there were certain elements of the concert that were not only unnecessary, but just stupid. One of these was the naked, obese, old ladies. I hate to say this, not meaning to offend anyone that gets turned on by this thing, but if you're going to use women as dancers, then use women around ages 17-23 that aren't huge. If there were an age police, then they'd give these women a ticket for going 17 in a 75. The other thing that was completely retarded was the bassist's undying need to wear a cheap thong while playing. Why the hell? So what? The bassist is fat, and so if Tchort, but he's not parading around in a thong.

The worst thing about the concert was the crowd's lack of energy. The front row of the concert clapped, while maybe five people in the front were going nuts about it. Everyone else was just standing around and doing the golf-clap while the band played. The frustration of this shows in the band. Nattefrost's vocals get more rough and harsh whenever he couldn't get shit out of the crowd. The band tried being louder and having Bloodpervertor going crazy, but all of it didn't do shit for the crowd's energy. If you're at a concert, don't act like you're at a golf tournament.

The bonus features are about as meaningful as Christianity. The "home videos" are nothing but someone video-taping a river and a girl's ass. The only features that are worth a shit are the interview with Nattefrost and the video of the band recording. It gives you a better understanding of the band when you see them without all the corpsepaint and chains. The one thing that would've made the DVD great would be more interviews and videos of the activities that the band does off-stage. That would've made it a lot more interesting.

Overall, this DVD is not anything special. Carpathian Forest is not entirely to blame for this. You're better off listening to their recordings than seeing the DVD.

This DVD itself was worth the money. But it also has some flaws. It is loaded with extra stuff like bootlegs, extra audio, extra concerts, home footage, and just some other stuff. Some of it shouldn’t have been included because of its pointlessness. But overall the main show of the DVD was sweet.

Main Show – The main show was pretty genius, I liked it a lot in many ways. There were very few problems in the live show. The problem lies within their “Carpathian Forest Dancers.” Ultimately, they are 65 year old fat chicks with face paint on dancing around with granny panties on and their tops off. Luckily they only stick around for two songs but when I first put it in I nearly puked. The sound is perfect, just as if you were there. There are plenty of camera angles and the show has lots of effects. Some of the camera cuts are pretty stupid but overall the concert is great.

Bonus Footage – The thing I enjoyed most about the extra footage they put in it was the Wacken ’03 show. This show was pretty awesome and held many interesting songs. Just like the main show the set list was awesome. And within this show there were no old naked chicks…..And the Bassist had his pants on. More footage included bootlegs and home video. For those who haven’t seen bootlegs…Its one camera angle usually with shitty sound and the back of peoples heads. That’s what it is like what it was for all but two of the bootlegs here. The home videos were rather stupid. There wasn’t anything amusing or funny here and the lighting was usually horrible. This is one thing it could do without.

Bonus Audio – Nothing special. If you have the Cd’s you can here better quality version of the songs here. Something the DVD could have done without.

Extra Features – Some good stuff and some pointless stuff here. Its got a biography, for some reason an incomplete discography, desktop images, and for some very retarded reason a picture of their logo (even though they have it as a desktop image),

Overall this DVD was good but could have been better. More features could have been added and some should have been cut. Still buy it, you’ll enjoy it.