EVERGREY
A Night to Remember: Live 2004 DVD
Inside Out Music 2005
official site

What’s the 4-1-1?
The Swedish metallers commemorate their career to date with this recording of their hometown show in Gothenburg, Sweden. The 2-disc DVD release has a 19 song live performance, and 6 ½ hours of bonus materials that chronicle the early days of the band right up to the current days. Each disc is recorded in 5.1 sound and 16:9 widescreen format.

Genre
Power metal / hard rock / metal / melodic

The Good
Disc 1: A Night To Remember

Though the CD has been reviewed on the website previously, this DVD is my first real exposure to Evergrey so I want to say a couple of quick things about the music. Wow! There’s some real great material featured here. I’ve seen the band described as “dark progressive metal” and I guess that tag would kind of fit, but not in any negative connotation. The band is presented in this DVD in quite the brilliant light. Everything from the opening intro and the nice use of the blue hues during most of the show.

I particularly enjoyed the songs “More Than Ever”, “The Masterplan”, “A Touch Of Blessing”, and think “For Every Tear That Falls” is superb. The band members each had their own individual moments to shine in the performance. I liked their inclusion of the string quartet and three backup singers besides the band members. You can tell a lot of planning went into setting up this DVD and it will serve as a quality career spanning method of introducing new listeners to Evergrey for the foreseeable future.

The audio mix is pretty good, there’s rarely a bad spot where anything gets drowned out. I don’t usually get too many DVDS, but I’m really glad that the mix and sound quality here are pretty top notch. I like that the band isn’t rooted to one spot on the stage. They move around here and there which lends itself to a much better performance than if they just stand around and play without looking like they are putting any life into their show.

Disc 2: The Shocking Truth

The second disc contains all the bonus material you could possibly hope to have on the band. There are videos for six of the band’s songs including “A Touch Of Blessing”, “More Than Ever” and “For Every Tear That Falls”. There’s brief interviews with each member regarding the equipment they use, and extensive behind the scenes footage on their various tours and in the studio. There are also interviews with the band as a whole and individual chats as well. The interviews were mostly focused on what each member did before they joined the band, their favorite albums and song, and fan submitted questions. There’s nothing especially groundbreaking but interesting nonetheless.

The Bad
I have no real issues with the first disc at all. My main problems are with the bonus features. The behind the scenes footage really doesn’t amount to anything at all. How many times can you see the band hit another country or venue and complain about the size of the stage before it drives someone into insanity?

Another thing I noticed was that the mix on the audio was very low in the interview portions. I have the volume set at a high enough level but even still, I had a hard time hearing a lot of what was being said unless there was absolute silence and stillness. It’s almost as if someone forgot to mike the band at times or turn up the levels.

The Verdict
I was relative unimpressed with the bonus features beyond the videos which I had never seen before. However, it’s all about the concert for me and that was spectacular. A Night To Remember is a darn near perfect career defining retrospective that will serve as a great way to introduce potential new fans to the band.

Did You Know?
The renowned video producer Patrik Ulleaus oversaw the recording of this live performance with 15 hi definition cameras. He’s worked with other metal bands such as Dimmu Borgir, Lacuna Coil, and In Flames.

Evergrey bassist Michael Hakansson handled bass duties for The Project Hate’s upcoming new album Armageddon March Eternal (Symphonies Of Slit Wrists).
The first instrument Hakansson learned to play was the flute, while he was in grade school.

Rating: out of 5

Related Reviews:
Evergrey - A Night to Remember (CD)

-- Jay Roberts