Cannibal Corpse: Centuries of Torment
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Movie Reviews of Cannibal Corpse: Centuries of Torment
Movie Review: One of the most thorough band DVDs I've seen
Summary: 4 Stars
As soon as I saw the contents of the DVD a few months before the release, it was clear that this could be one of the best band-related DVDs there is. For me, the best is definitely Evergrey's A Night to Remember, with the hours upon hours of studio work, backstage footage and interviews, all wrapped up with a very good live show.
Centuries of Torment comes very close to that level, but unfortunately it is the live show part that falls ever so slightly short. Personally I've never been a fan of compilation live footage, with material from several different shows with constantly changing audio/video quality. If you prefer it like that, this is a nice DVD. It has clips from many different years and places with few tracks appearing twice. I was horrified when the main girth of the live shows, the Toronto 2006 show, started off in extremely poor sound quality. Luckily the sound picked up after a few songs. Maybe they had technical problems at the mixing/recording desk?
But the interviews and history told by the band themselves, and pretty much anyone who ever had something to do with the band, really makes up for the slight live show troubles. This is definitely one of the most thorough band DVDs I've seen, including the Evergrey one. Nothing is left untouched, and the Bonus Chunks part really goes out there with the bizarre tidbits - delicious!
Overall for the price (especially ordering from Finland, with the Euro being very strong vs. the US Dollar), this is simply an awesome package. The packaging artwork and holographic coating is also very cool, wrapping up this piece into one great release!
Movie Review: Great documentary, awful live DVD
Summary: 3 Stars
This historical Cannibal Corpse-document comes in a beautiful digipak case with Vincent Locke's illustration in emboss and a "rainbow effect" (don't ask me what the exact word is, but lenticular doesn't quite seem right). The only downside is that the rainbow effect is used all over, so it's harder to make out the actual image.
The first disc covers the entire history of the band, starting from before they ever played music up until the release of Kill and ends pretty much on the fans and their own words. It goes from having a sort of reminiscant tone "way back when we did crazy stuff", to words from more current bands involved and such. It has a lot of insight and some funny moments as well, but since there's twenty years in three hours, it often feels pretty cramped and "rushed", so don't expect a runthrough of individual songs or studio footage (except as background-clips). You do get a strong sense of who they are and where they came from though, and the hardships and good times of staying true to their music for all this time.
On the second disc, there is a collection of live performances from different eras. Unfortunately the quality (the picture, sound and camera angles, not the musical performance) only ranges from bad to worse, even in the concert from 2007. It's lackluster bootleg stuff. At times I found the first performance video (from the late 80's) almost had better sound quality than the latest performance, and it shouldn't have to be that way. If you want to really see or hear a good Cannibal Corpse show, get Live Cannibalism on DVD or CD. It captures the raw intensity with perfectly good enough sound and picture, and that's why it works as a live album as well.
The music videos (all they've done) are included and look fine (quality-wise). If they look a little "cheesy" (and are pretty much all in black and white), that's more likely because it was intentional. There's also "Stripped, Raped and Strangled" with Trevor from The Black Dahlia Murder. It sounds like a big deal, but it's really not. Trevor jumps around a bit, and sings along, but is barely heard at all because Corpsegrinder does the song normal, drowning him out completely. Bummer, could've been more interesting.
The third disc was really a great addition, worthy in itself. It's shorter little features (varying in length from very brief to in-depth) about Vincent Locke's art (great artist, but he needs to speak up!), the bans and controversy, the fan tattoos (all brief, some fantastic), the merch and shirts, touring (or rather crazy stuff on tours - very funny segment), lyrics and songwriting (informative - funny rejected titles), George being in Metalocalypse (wish we'd seen him in the studio), sideprojects, who the people in the band really are (one of the longest and best additions of them all - very surprising and entertaining!) and finally a little claymation segment inspired by Vince's art (pointless but pretty cool).
I can recommend this DVD if you're interested in the history of Cannibal Corpse or early death metal in general, it spans their entire career so far with interesting tidbits and a lot of nice info about the band members themselves. But I can not recommend it if you want their live performances, for that I'd still have to say, go with Live Cannibalism.
Movie Review: Centuries of Torment review
Summary: 3 Stars
The documentary on the life of the band was totally awesome. That was worth the purchase of the dvd alone. However, the live videos were crap. When I bought this I was, I was primarily buying this for the live stuff. I didn't expect all the live vids to be top quality (like the one's from the 90's), but I expected the one's from '00 an on to at least be digital, which they were not. The sound quality of all the live songs and video quality of most live songs looked and sounded like they were taken from a video camera. Needless to say I was let down on that part.