Kingcrimsonprog
Coheed And Cambria’s Neverender DVD was filmed in New York back in 2008 and released in 2009 and contains all of the band’s first four albums played live, in their entirety from beginning to end.
The first thing that needs pointing out is that as an actual DVD, this is incredible. I own over one hundred live concert DVDs from a variety of different genres and time periods and even now a few years on from its release, I still think that Neverender has some of the best visuals, camera work and editing any band ever had on a live DVD.
This is added to the band’s great stage design, with screens and backdrops, excellent lighting and just a general visible air of effort all around.
For the most part (and especially on Second Stage Turbine Blade concert) the performance of the band is utterly incredible, improving on the studio version with added power and confidence. Claudio’s vocals are much better than on their The Last Supper DVD and drummer Chris Pennie does a great job all around, really giving the songs depth and attitude, and he even gets an excellent drum solo at one point.
For the two later albums, the band get out guest female vocalists to cover for the amount of intertwining simultaneous overlaid vocals that appear on the studio albums, which is largely fine although they obviously don’t sound exactly like how Claudio sang them on the album. All throughout there is an additional keyboard player on stage to replicate the string sections and other extras in the songs.
The DVD and the performances therein are exceptional. There are very few critisms to be made at all. The final album, No World For Tomorrow loose a little something live, in that the studio counterpart was much heavier than the band play it here and Claudio sometimes struggles with some of the more complex vocal parts. The album also gains something however, as it was the band’s most overproduced studio album and tracks like ‘Mother Superior,’ and ‘On The Brink,’ sound incredible in their stripped down live forms, which I feel balances it out.
If you like Coheed And Cambria you’d be mad not to buy Neverender, the quality is astounding and there is a hell of a lot of it to enjoy.