CARPATHIAN FOREST — We're Going to Hollywood for This (review)

CARPATHIAN FOREST — We're Going to Hollywood for This album cover

Live album · 2004 · Black Metal

5/5 · 2011-09-23
Kingcrimsonprog

Carpathian Forest’s 2004 We’re Going To Hollywood For This-Live Perversions DVD (the title being a play on the title of their compilation album We’re Going to Hell for This) is a fairly extensive and interesting release from the Norwegian black metal band Carpathian Forest.

The main feature, a 19 track (15 of which are proper songs) indoor concert is where you will find the meat of the set. This is very professionally filmed and recorded set, with very good sound, camera work and editing. The recording quality and sound mix are superb, both in stereo and in 5.1.

The set list is fairly balanced and represented, and seamlessly mixes (at the time) newer material with the older classics well, blending their punkier side, their symphonic side and their straight up metal side rather well indeed.

The band play on a large stage with great lighting, occasional smoke and pyro, banners in front of a sizeable and enthusiastic crowd. Their own actual performance is pretty much flawless, and visually impressive (as long as you don’t mind their obese bass player playing in a thong and the intermittent appearance of two overweight middle aged strippers.) The overall quality of the show is really high considering the size of Carpathian forest and puts the DVDs of many larger bands to shame.

Additionally; there is a less professional but welcome additional live outdoor set from Wacken Open Air Festival 2003, featuring eight tracks that is definitely worth a few viewings.

The extras include a five minute interview with Nattlefrost and the dancers, an amusingly written text based biography, all sorts of image gallerys (now defunct with the invention of wikipedia and google images) and even the option just to view their logo on screen because, you know… that’s important !?

Additionally; as well as all the video content there is a whole host of audio content on the DVD. There are eight bonus audio tracks from demos ranging as far back as 1999, the track listing is ‘Nostalgia,’ ‘Pierced Genitalia,’ ‘Third Attempt,’ ‘The Swordsmen,’ ‘Dodsangst,’ ‘Black Shining Leather,’ ‘The Northern Hemisphere,’ and ‘Mask Of The Slave.’

This demo content is featured in special audio menus, as well as a live audio rendition of ‘He’s Turning Blue,’ and Pre-Production demos of six tracks from their excellent Defending The Throne Of Evil album, and even two tracks from their precursor band Grimm (from 1993) and finally World Destroyer 2000 which features three band members.

Overall, We’re Going To Hollywood For This is an incredible all-stops-pulled-out kind of release, that every Carpathian Forest fan should own and which would serve as a perfect introduction to the band, their various musical styles, attitude and particular sense of humour. It is packed full of additional content and the main concert is of a very high standard indeed, I highly recommend anyone with an interest in the band to pick up a copy.