Past Entertainment Articles.

Article for the week of 8/21/05

Tsunami Bomb: Live at the Glasshouse DVD
By, Cozmic

I've always considered live DVDs to be a somewhat pointless thing. I mean, it should be impossible to catch the intensity of a concert on a DVD, right?
After seeing ”Live at The Glasshouse” I changed my opinion pretty quickly.
The DVD was recorded in Pomona, California during the ”Definitive Act Tour”, a few days before Tsunami Bomb released their second full length album, which has been out since the 21st September last year. The time spent from recording to release has been pretty well spent. Because the DVD is full of funny little things, although the main thing is of course the concert itself, which is where we shall begin.
”El Diablo”, from the first album, superbly performed and just jampacked of energy. And yes, it sounds great, and you can feel the sheer energy from the show itself.
And it stays that way. Tsunami Bomb decided to do their longest set in history, without playing a single song that even borders on calm. Instead it's all fun, friendly punk, some nice talk between the songs and not a single swearword until the encore. And it's amazing just how much energy you get from watching it. After a few minutes you're up jumping around playing airguitar, drummingor just generally going nuts.
As for the songs themselves, there's a few songs from ”The definitive act” while the majority of the 18 songs are from ”The Ultimate Escape”. A few songs from ”The invasion from within” manage to find their way in, and the nicest thing is probably ”Breakaway”, which is no longer available on any of the Cds. And you also get a version of ”Roundabout” with ”new” lyrics to reflect the bands change of bassplayer.
About the only bad thing I can think of is that if you want to use the subtitles function (english or japanese available) to sing alomnng to the songs, you'll find that the subtitles are a bit slow during the songs. That, and that they haven't translated all the ”klingon” Matt and Mike sing.
This brings us to specail features: multi-angle, which i haven't quite understood yet, because it doesn't seem to work that well, commentary and tourfootage, and, to top it all off, the video for ”Dawn on a Funeral Day”.
The tour footage is quite fun, although it is a bit hard to hear all they're saying (subtitles here would be better) and it does contain some pretty weird stuff. Included here are some other liveshows, where the sound is sadly quite poor.
The ”Dawn on a Funeral Day” video is, as it should be, quite good. It's more of a fun thing than a reason to actually buy the DVD for, as Tsunami Bomb are pretty bad at making good musicvideos as opposed to live performances, but nevertheless, it is quite nice.
And finally, the commentary. Now, this is something you'll either really enjoy or find really boring, depending on how much trivia and stuff you want to know. Personally I am a total sucker for stuff like that, and the commentary is highly entertaining. The only sad thing is that Mike, the guitarist, isn't in on it, but the jokes about lizardmen, insects, klingon and M's ”Wild stallions!” when Mike and Matt are goofing around on stage more than makes up for it.
Add to this the fact that the menus contain songs from ”The Definitive Act”, although not the entire songs, and you have a totally rocking DVD I'd recommend to anyone who likes fast energetic punk in general and Tsunami Bomb in particular. If you're a fan, this is a must have.