Artist: Onslaught
Album: Live Damnation
Type: Album
Label: Candlelight Records
A few years ago, I questioned the very reason for existence of live albums. If you want to know how great a band is live, surely you’d want to experience it first hand rather than to hear it polished up and void of ‘real’ atmosphere? I even thought that perhaps they served their purpose for some bands that don’t have an official ‘best of’ album. That was until I remembered some of the truly great live albums – surely the absence of ‘Live After Death’ in any Maiden fans collection would be considered a gaping hole? Maybe. Maybe not. I’m still not 100% decided myself. But I can say this - although a good enough release, Onslaught’s latest addition to ‘live on plastic’ hasn’t really helped me with the decision!
I’ve been a huge fan of Onslaught’s first couple of albums for many years now, so these polished up versions of the older classics are a welcome and interesting feast for my ears (I actually managed to catch them live supporting Testament earlier this year, so can attest to the great show they put on). This recording was made at Damnation festival in 2008, with the majority of the 8 song set taken from their 2007 release ‘Killing Peace’, and their second (and best, in my opinion) release ‘The Force’. It’s quite surprising to see how well the tracks from each release work together in the live environment seeing as they were written and released over 20 years apart. The only real downer here for me is that there are no cuts from their third album ‘In Search of Sanity’, but you can’t have everything I guess.
Bearing in mind this is a live album, it is only the clear crowd noise between songs, and Sy Keeler screaming out the song titles that give that away. There’s no audience participation or stage banter, leading me back to my earlier quandary. With the quality production and crisp, error-free playing this really could just be a best of album with re-recorded studio tracks of the older classics. Perhaps that alone is testament to the quality of Onslaught’s live performance, or perhaps a bit of it is down to Judas Priest styled ‘Unleashed in the East/Studio’ jiggery pokery. Either way, this contains a lot of Onslaught’s best material and is worth looking into if you don’t already own their back catalogue.
http://www.myspace.com/onslaughtuk
http://www.onslaughtfromhell.com
Lars Christiansen
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