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Death > Vivus! > Reviews
Death - Vivus!

Good for a New Collector - 80%

NucLeaR ThronE, April 19th, 2012

This is the latest album in the Relapse reissues series of the Death catalogue. It's an okay album, considering it's just two live albums slapped together. The first album in this set is the Live in LA from 1998, and the other is Live in Eindhoven, also from 1998.

Both of these live albums are good, but not great. They both start out with The Philosopher, an undisputed Death classic. The reason that I say that this album is good for new collectors is that real Death collectors probably already have both of these live recordings.

The albums are both of pretty good recording quality for a death metal band in the 90's, but the sound isn't too great. Live in Eindhoven seems to be a little more clear than the Live in LA recordings, probably because Death was playing the Dynamo festival on the Live in Eindhoven, while Live in LA was just Death headlining a small venue. The Live in LA tracks tend to be a little faster than both the live tracks on the other live disc, as well as being faster than the studio tracks themselves. One thing that peeves me about both live albums in this package is Chuck's voice. Everyone knows that his singing voice (or screeching voice if you prefer) got higher and higher as Death's career went on. The recordings of tracks from The Sound of Preserverance sound remarkably like the album versions (even though the both live recordings are pre the Sound of Preserverance,) but his vocals on the other tracks, primarily pre-Symbolic era tracks, are so strained and raspy that they kind of turn of the listener. Both of these albums are great, in my mind, but because of some of the recording issues, I'd have to list the Live in Eindhoven CD as my favorite of he two (I love albums to have good recording quality, one reason why the 'trve kvlt' black metal pisses me off.)

I'm not going to go track by track in this review, only because both of these albums are already on this site. The recordings have been touched up a little bit, and thankfully, have a good range of songs (although there isn't much pre-Human era Death.) I'd have to give this album an 8 out of 10, primarily cuz I'm a bit of a Death fanboy, and can't rate them too low.