When watching/listening to Dead & Alive, the first major live CD/DVD combo from US metalcore grads The Devil Wears Prada, you have to ask yourself: are live albums really necessary?
In an age when every spit, shit or punch is neatly filed on YouTube, you essentially have your pick of the litter of ‘essential’ musical moments, so a live package has got to offer something special, something worth holding on to as you viscously windmill through your front room trying to recreate the ‘magic’.
Put simply, Dead & Alive is no Live After Death, but as a document of the band’s progression, marking their self-described maturation from scene kid poster boys into streamlined beatdown machines on their biggest tour to date, it’s passable. Ultimately though, it’s an average-quality concert film capturing a pretty one-dimensional show with little dynamics or action beyond the punishing strobes and pulsating seas of sweat-ridden pits.
And with the option of watching a boring show, listening to a boring show is rendered pretty much pointless, so, for prime TDWP listening, stick with the records.
