TALISMAN
World’s Best Kept Secret 2DVD
Five Men Live 2CD
Frontiers Records 2005
official site

Read the Jeff Scott Soto interview

What’s the 4-1-1?
To commemorate 15 years together, Sweden’s Talisman release a double DVD and double live CD.

Genre
Melodic rock / hard rock

The Good
DVD 1 – Live at Club Mondo Stockholm, Sweden August 2003: This is a small club show that consists of a fifteen song set. “Break Your Chains” has a heavy, repetitive riff that is followed by Soto’s momentous vocal chops. The chorus is melodic with enhancing background vocals. Both guitarists take a turn at soloing. A muddy bass line dominates “Color My XTC”. Jeff’s vocals are just as strong as his desire for the lady he sings of. “Skin on Skin” opens up with a piercing lick and a soulful wail from Soto. The track continues with an addictive lick. Man, Talisman are horny.

“Tears in the Sky” is flush with blues-based riffs and speed metal runs. The harmonic chorus, bass, and guitar solos set this one over the top. “In Make Believe” starts with a clean arpeggio run until the break-beat drum patter kicks in. Soto carries the slow parts with passion and the up-tempo parts like a man possessed. “Scream of Anger” is packed with driving muted riffs, quick-finger licks, and plenty of screaming of anger. “If Only You Would Be My Friend” is made up of seventies styled funk riffs, and is about enduring friendship.

The crowd jumps in on the ohhh…ohhh section of “I’ll Be Waiting” and on the chorus as well. A two minute bass solo leads into the hard-charging track “Outta My Way”, while a one minute guitar solo leads into the energetic “Standing On Fire”. The energy never lets up throughout the whole performance. After the show are some clips of the band reacting to the performance.

Live at the Sweden Rock Festival June 2003: This is a show in front of a much, much larger audience. It’s an open air venue. Talisman’s set for this performance is comprised of ten of the songs from the Club Mondo set. I assume they had to cut the set down by five songs due to time restraints. The only real differences with this performance are slight: solos, song length, and song order.

Sound wise I prefer the smaller club setting, but the open-air show is still good. It’s also shot in black and white. Bonus Features – Multi-angle views of the Club Mondo show for the performances of “Mysterious”, “If You Would Only”, and “Outta My Way”. You get four different angle shots on the left side of the screen, with the main shot showing on the right. You can toggle between the different views on the left, and they will appear on the right.

DVD 2 – Retrospect - The Movie: A look at Talisman from their early years to 2003, featuring videos, live performances, backstage, and on the road footage. The video for “I’ll Be Waiting” shows that the group dressed glam like everyone else in 1990. The video for “Mysterious” was shot during the recording of the song back in 1990. Three live performances from a show in Japan back in 1993 are included. They were taken from a previous home video release. The video of “Color My XTC” has Jeff Scott Soto looking like the Uni-Bomber. It’s even shot in the woods. Two performances from a circus or carnival show are included that were shot with a home video camera. Four performances from the Lokerse Festival in 2003 are included as well. The crowd is huge. The ‘movie’ ends with a video from their last studio album Cats and Dogs, “In Make Believe”; the video chronicles what you just watched on the DVD. Bonus Features – include a discography, a shred video, a segment called naked bass player, and ‘Eating My BLT 2004”. You can experience those last two yourselves.

2 CD – Disc one is the Club Mondo performance and Disc two is the Sweden Rock Festival performance.

The Bad
DVD set and CD set are sold separately.

The Verdict
After viewing the double DVD and listening to the double CD, I official have 17 of Talisman’s greatest hits burnt into my brain…and that’s a good thing! The DVD is the most complete retrospective I’ve seen, plus you get two current live performances from the group in support of their current album. I like the contrast between the small venue show and large venue show. Since most of us can’t take the DVD in the car, the double CD makes a great audio compliment. WOW!

Did You Know?
Bassist Marcel Jacob co-wrote “Scream of Anger” with Joey Tempest of Europe. It appeared on Europe’s 1984 release Wings of Tomorrow.

Rating: out of 5

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Jeff Scott Soto - Lost in the Translation
Soul SirkUS - World Play

--George Dionne