Review Summary: "It's alive!"
More than two decades later after the release of the genre's most famous and definitve album, the band "resurrected" the entire thing in 2015, when they performed the full album on a concert in Norrköping, Sweden on December 18th. After that, the live recording went through a lot of mixing and mastering, and finally
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas came back to life at the end of 2016.
And what a majestic return it was!
I'll spare the dear reader (and myself) from a lengthy introduction to the band or the album's origin story - we all know that. So instead, I'd suggest to just have a closer look (or listen) on this! First of all,
...Alive is a result of a live recording, but actually the whole package sounds way better than any other live albums the band ever did, and what you can hear is among their very best outputs. (The average rating
doesn't lie!)
The comparison between the two albums by the technical aspects may seem very unfair, but the impact of a modern studio equipment is indisputable in
...Alive's success. Having better amps, guitars or just simply a lot bigger studio-budget is very effective way for making any recording sound better, but it would be very unproffesional if we'd ignore the fact how the band changed over time. The band matured, and the current lineup is probably (but arguably) their strongest. Having two guitarist (namely Teloch and Ghul) is, in my humble opinion, the most-welcomed change compared to the original album. The guitars sound phenomenal, their synchronised performance is simply excellent - and as a guitar tone-snob, I think they really nailed achieving the
right guitar tone for this one! Even though many would say these main intruments sound less raw and filthy than in the original, but to describe the difference, the guitars in
...Alive have a certain elegantly evil and rougher sound - and, personally, I love it.
A great improvement can be observed in the rhythm section as well. Despite Varg sounds very great on bass on the original record, I always preferred Necrobutcher over him in Mayhem - with a good reason. As the only remaining founding member in the band, he always had a great overview on the band's overall sound, and his presence on the bass cannot be missed - and well, he always sounded better. Unlike in many black metal releases,
...Alive has a sweet and perfectly audible bass - slightly distorted, and some gain boost here and there does wonders for the overall sound (just listen to 'Life Eternal'!). With Hellhammer behind the drum kit, I believe this duo is still among the very bests generally in black metal. And speaking of Hellhammer's drumming, I'll cut it very short, since the drums sound simply fantastic: tight and precise, with a very organic drum sound... I dare to say the original piece sounds flat and lifeless compared to what you'll hear in
...Alive.
And finally, the most worshipped factor (based on the general feedbacks) if we compare the two
De Mysteriis... albums: Attila's vocals. It is interesting to write this review after the release of
Daemon, since I believe
...Alive somewhat foreshadowed
Daemon's excellence. Attila sounds nothing like in the '94 release, (just compare the title-tracks, for example) and what you can hear here is one of his best performances: grandiose, yet sinister and very theatrical. In my opinion, the reverb effect they used on his vocals was an excellent choice, since even his most quiet lines sound powerful and, I'd say, added a nice "creep factor" to his voice.
For a live album,
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas Alive sounds outstandingly good, due to the masterfully executed mixing and mastering. Hats off to Necromorbus Studio for doing such an excellent work making this possible, since for a live album it's incredibly well balanced and recorded. The crowd is barely audible, their presence is noticeable just a few times during the whole record, making it is very easy to forget about the fact this is actually a live album.
After all,
De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas is a classic black metal album, but I think such "resurrections" can prove that albums like
...Alive have have their raison d'etre, and they're not just unnecessary crash-grabs as many believe. This is my favourite version of the album.
