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Overview Let me begin by saying that Lamentations is a must-own for any Opeth fan. The DVD consists of a whopping two full sets of Opeth, around 2 hours in total, on top of a "Behind the Scenes" documentary. For some reason, when I got the disc and started to watch it, I was under the impression that the documentary would be no more than 15 or 20 minutes long. Over an hour later, it was still going, bringing the DVD's content to at least 3 full hours, definately worth the price of admission. The Good The sound quality is perfect. My sound system is simply a stereo, but this DVD sounded just as good as its studio counterparts. The presentation is flawless, with a beautiful book, beautiful case, and very well designed menu system, that will allow you to jump to any song you desire. At first, I was disappointed that a scene selection was not available for the documentary portion, but in fact the documentary is not really divided up into any sort of logical parts, and while the scene skip button DOES work, providing a menu for it would probably just be stupid. The Bad The set. This is the first Opeth video, and they waste half of it on the entire Damnation album? Even Weakness? Besides Leper Affinity and Drapery Falls, all of the songs were off of the D albums. I can understand that the DVD is really based on these albums, but they are on album number 8 now, and only have one DVD, so I wouldn't have minded seeing The Moor, or Demon of the Fall, or When, or countless others instead of the new stuff. It'd be nice if they eventually do release a DVD with older songs on it, but that just doesn't seem likely. Maybe I'm alone on this, but skipping the first four albums, and barely touching the fifth seems kind of wasteful. I understand the whole idea of having the light stuff first, especially to appease those fans who are only a fan of Damnation, but the fact is that I've been waiting for this DVD since they said that they were doing this for Blackwater Park (which never, uh, happened, unfortunately), and I really wanted to see a crapload of heavy music. The Other If I made the set, I would have dropped the following: Windowpane, Death Whispered a Lullaby, Hope Leaves, Ending Credits, Weakness, A Fair Judgment, and The Drapery Falls (which may be pompous of me, but I saw it on the guitar.com video, and live twice, and the song is simply not as good as most other Opeth songs). I would have added: Face of Melinda, When, Bleak, The Moor, Blackwater Park, Serenity Painted Death, and um...you know what? It's probably a good thing I didn't make the set. Those poor guys would be up there all night. The Meaningless I would love to see some sort of realized vision for Still Life...like the album acted out or something. In truth, I have this huge urge to make it a novel, but that has a few hurdles in the way (like...not owning the story, for instance). The End Thanks for putting up with this waste of words. If you would like to write your own review, just go ahead and send it to me when you are done. You don't need to follow my format, of course, but I would prefer it was longer than a paragraph. All images and content Copyright Donald Morrone 2004 unless otherwise indicated. Opeth "O" and logo are the sole property of Opeth. Unauthorized use of any and all content on this website constitutes an infringement of all applicable copyright laws. Besides, it's in bad taste. |