UMUR
"Entangled in Chaos" is a live album release by US death metal act Morbid Angel. The album was released in May 1996 through Earache Records. The album contains tracks from all preceeding studio albums by the band and was recorded during the 1995/1996 tour supporting the "Domination (1995)" album. Bearing that in mind it´s a bit surprising that the only track from that album, which appears on "Entangled in Chaos", is "Dominate". Other than that the other albums are pretty equally represented and my guess is that most fans would be satisfied with the song selection.
Other than the song selection there´s not that much to be happy about here though. First of all the production is not very powerful. In addition to that the audience seem very distant and they don´t make much noise. The songs are performed with almost clinical precision and while that´s of course really impressive considering the playing speed on display here, it unfortunately also means that "Entangled in Chaos" doesn´t sound much like an authentic live recording. The fact that the songs are obviously taken from different shows on the tour and there are fadeouts and odd breaks between the songs too does not help on the flow of the album either. I´d say this most of all sounds like a live rehearsal more than an actual live album.
In my world live albums should add something extra to the studio versions of the songs and re-arrangements are also welcome. There´s nothing of that here. These live versions just sound like weaker and more badly produced versions of the original studio tracks and as a consequence I´m contantly reminded that I would much rather be listening to the studio albums. I´d say "Entangled in Chaos" fails to deliver the raw live energy that´s so crucial in extreme metal and therefore the album doesn´t live up to my expectations to how a successful extreme metal live album should sound. I can´t give more than a 2.5 star rating for this album. I can´t for the life of me understand how they can sound this tame.