V/A - Recollection 3

GENRE: N/A
COUNTRY: N/A
FORMAT: DVD
LABEL: Relapse Records
YEAR: September 6th, 2004

RATING: 5/10
REVIEWED BY: PSL
PROVIDED BY: Target Distribution

This is the second instalment of the Relapse Records' Recollection DVD series and I must admit that I found it to be a good DVD sampler that really shows the true diversity of the label and this despite the fact that I didn't really care for anything besides Mastodon, Nile, Dying Fetus, Suffocation and Skinless. However I still found the DVD enjoyable and having the visual side of the songs adds so much more to the music itself as opposite to the traditional CD sampler where you of course only have the sound. The visual aspect really pulls the whole musical experience into a whole different spectrum.

The quality of the videos is pretty equal, but there are a few videos that tend to pull the overall experience in a negative direction like for instance Vidnaobmana's "Skin Strip" which is totally boring but so is the music. And Cephalic Carnage doesn't impress a whole lot either with their primitive, partly black and white video, but fortunately the skip button has been invented so it doesn't really ruin anything.

However on the opposite the video's from Mastodon, Nile, Dying Fetus and Skinless really pulls in a positive direction and in particular the Skinless video was a surprise. The rest of the videos were pretty much your average music videos, but this is not meant as a negative thing at all but somehow they didn't really attract my attention, but that was purely due to the music.

So overall this is a bit disappointing for me since I don't really care that much for most of the bands and would have preferred a DVD strictly concentrating on death metal, but on the other hand it doesn't hurt to hear something different once in awhile and things could easily have been a lot worse than this.

To cut into the bone and conclude; there's really something for every taste here whether you like noise, hardcore, grindcore or death metal to name a few. Fortunately it seems like the labels are really beginning to discover the opportunities that lies within the DVD format and many others how begun to release these kind of samples too. Who knows perhaps we won't see the traditional CD sampler in the future, but instead get DVD's like the Recollection 2 DVD and I for one wouldn't complain about that because then there's no more waiting for your favourite video to pop up on the music channels.