When Satan Lives

This was one of my first death metal albums, way back in the spring of 2000. Up to then, I had mostly stuck to heavy, power and thrash. I asked a few locals for recommendations and this was one of them. Here's the thing: It kind of slipped through the cracks and I only listened to it for the first time two or three weeks ago. Ouch.

Sucks to be me as this is a really good collection of Deicide's material up to that time. In terms of live performance, this is pretty tightly played and the sound is great and the thing is cleaned up enough that sometimes you almost forget it's a live album. Whether or not that's a good thing is really up to the listener. For the most part, you hear the crowd only in between songs. 55 minutes of nearly non-stop Deicide pounding away at your speakers, there are worse ways to spend an hour. Unfortunately this seems to have been released in audio format only. A DVD (or, back then, likely a VHS) would certainly have been a lot of fun to watch. If you're looking at sampling some of the best of the band's early material, this one is a winner. That's what I had set out to do back then...