This is the dvd/cd of the Music as a Weapon 2 Tour from the spring of 2003. Which consisted of headliners Disturbed as well as Taproot, Chevelle, and Unloco. I was really excited when this came out because Im a fan of all the bands and immediately bought it as soon as I found it (took over two weeks). I wont be rating the songs themselves as you can look at other reviews for that, but will do a segment by segment review of each bands performance and what the plusses and minuses were to me. Here we go.
Unloco only has two songs on this, Bruises and Empty so this wont be long. The band had a good stage presence the entire time, but we didnt see the guitarist that much. Joey(singer) interacted with the crowd for both of these songs well and has a good live voice. The drummer was energetic and the bassist was good except he stayed in the same place a lot of the time. Overall the band was pretty good for both of these songs and had a lot of energy which the crowd responded to well. I give their performance a 3.5/5
Chevelle also has two songs on this, their popular single The Red and Forfeit. The band is a lot different live musically, its a lot heavier which is pretty cool and on The Red, Pete(guitar, vox) does an awesome solo like thing with the guitar near the end, very cool. Sam(drums) and Pete enjoy playing during the two songs, but Joe(bass, backing vox) seems to be bored most of the time. Petes voice isnt as strong as I thought it would be, but is still nice. David Draiman comes out in the middle of Chevelles performance of The Red and backs up with Pete and Joe, making the crowd scream a lot when he first comes out. Overall the performance was pretty good and makes me want the band to release a live dvd sometime in the near future, this gets a 4/5.
Now for Taproot, with the three songs- Myself, Sumtimes, and the song that gained them some media attention, Poem. The music itself is pretty okay, but can get boring at times and the singers voice isnt that great, although their performance of Poem is nice. They arent very interactive with the crowd and could have been better live, but Im sure they tried. As a fan of this Taproot I was disappointed with the overall performance, Ill give this a 2.5/5 for effort at least.
And finally there is Disturbed with a total of seven songs including the exciting opener Loading the Weapon and a cover of Metallicas Fade to Black. As well as the songs Bound, Dehumanized, Darkness, Prayer, and finally Stupify. David Draimans singing is excellent as always and the music for all the songs are extremely good as well. The cover of Fade to Black is done very well and the acoustic song Darkness has all the members playing the acoustic guitar and the drumming playing an acoustic bass. The opener Loading the Weapon is a prelude to what I must say is the best live song on this entire album Bound. Prayer is done very well and on Stupify Pete Loeffler of Chevelle and Joey Duenas of Unloco says all the bands are welcome out on stage and they pump up the crowd and when they sing they do it very well. The overall performance of Disturbed was very great and did not have a weak spot ever so I would have to give Disturbed a 5/5.
As for extras on this the only thing that there is is the Disturbed video Liberate where it shows the band playing live and the band before the show hanging out and warming up.
Plusses:
+All of the Disturbed songs especially Bound
+David Draiman singing in Chevelles The Red
+Pete and Joey backing up on Disturbeds Stupify
+Good camera angles at times
Minuses
- Taproot didnt give that great of a performance
- There are these lines throughout the entire dvd on the bottom and top of the screen that change color at times that can be very annoying
- Wish that Disturbed could have sacrificed a song or two on here so Chevelle and Unloco could have one more or Taproot only have two songs instead of three
- Where are the extras besides one video? :upset:
This is overall a pretty good dvd/cd to have in your collection if you are a fan of nu-metal or hard rock and is worth the money despite the lack of extras. I give this a 4/5.
