| Product: |
10 Jahre Fritz - Die CD |
| Date: |
21/03/08 (21 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Beatsteaks having fun, and the crowd seems to like it.
Disadvantages: If someone recommended this to you as a punk album, you should smash their face in.
I don't know the backstory to this live album from German punk band Beatsteaks, but assuming it documents a special tenth anniversary gig with more freedom to mess around, and not just a standard performance which would make it extremely disappointing, it wasn't the finest decision to put it out on CD.
The original Beatsteaks songs that are played don't give any signs that this is a punk band, exclusively representing their melodic hard rock style as seen on the contemporary studio release 'Living Targets,' while their choice of cover songs is strange indeed. The Cure doesn't strike me as the first band that a punk outfit would choose to cover, especially not something as mellow as 'Just Like Heaven,' while an initially promising Manowar cover is spoiled by the silly decision to turn it into a country piece. This might have been slightly amusing if it was limited to a brief ditty, but they play and spoil the entire thing, when it surely would have been much more amusing to simply reproduce the original style of that daft song in all its heavy metal glory.
The sound quality is a little poor, which is always a good thing for punk gigs and impresses me a lot more than their horribly polished studio output, but the tracklist is deceptive thanks to the inclusion of brief segments of dialogue as full tracks, namely tracks five, eight, ten and fourteen. Even with these included, the album comes in at a disappointing half-hour in length, and is mostly rather tedious too.
I guess this album, and the Beatsteaks' music in general, would be more appealing to those who didn't expect a band popularly labelled as punk to actually sound anything like a punk band, as what at first seemed like a promising riff in 'Let Me In' is subsequently spoiled by the crowd being invited to sing the cheery, poppy chorus, and judging by the sound of it, the audience is mainly comprised of teenage girls. Only 'Shut Up Stand Up' is a little bit faster and more enjoyable, but that all too soon turns into bland indie riffs, and 'Summer' sounds the same as every other melodic hard rock song produced in the United States, which I suppose is the point.
1. Intro
2. Let Me In
3. To Be Strong
4. Just Like Heaven
5. Kings of Metal
6. Wollt Ihr Tanzen?
7. Shut Up Stand Up
8. Tommy Wosch
9. Shiny Shoes Part 1
10. Wette Verloren
11. Shiny Shoes Part 2
12. Hey Du
13. Summer
14. Take the Take Out Now
Summary: Beatsteaks live album (2002).
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