Review of Meteors, The: Live At The Hellfire Club

Introduction

My selection of discs from DVD Reviewer this week including two music titles from bands that I had no previous experience of. First up was the dreadful "Extreme Noise Terror", and second was a double from "The Meteors" ? "Live at the Hellfire Club" and "Video Nasty".

"Video Nasty" is a compilation which includes the whole set from a concert in Birmingham in 1988.

"Live at the Hellfire Club" is, as the title suggests, a recording of a live performance from 1983.

Video

This is a Region 0 disc that comes with NTSC video, those of you without a multi-standard television beware. I started with "Video Nasty" which has dismal video quality, looking like bad camcorder footage, with a very grainy and dirty image that has little detail and dubious focus. Both promo videos included in this section also suffer from serious pixellation problems, which at times makes VideoCD look good...need I say any more?

Having watched "Video Nasty", I tried "Live at the Hellfire Club" which made "Video Nasty" look good, this is utterly dismal and actually looks like it was shot in 1940, such is the lack of detail and focus. To make matters worse there are horizontal lines across the screen throughout the program, flickering on and off. I`m sorry Cherry Red, this does not come anywhere meeting the minimum that I expect from DVD and is a disgrace.

Audio

The soundtrack comes in Dolby Digital 2.0, and isn`t a good example of what a DVD can do. The sound is totally devoid of any bass, and has a heavily compressed high end, sounding more like an audio cassette than a CD or DVD. As a result, the sound is very tinny and has very wishy-washy cymbals.

As far as the songs go, the band are an odd mixture of rock, rock and roll and rockabilly. Fearing the worst, I started "Video Nasty" and it came as a big surprise that the first song, "Go Buddy Go" was actually quite good, even given the substandard picture and sound. However, the songs are of very variable quality with some real dross in between some quiet good tunes. Unfortunately, the poor quality sound really hinders the band`s delivery of their music, and as a result, many songs sound similar.

The sound is similarly poor on "Live at the Hellfire Club" although there is less compression and a slight hint of bass. This is however compensated by an annoying electrical hum...

Like the video, the sound quality falls far short of the required standard.

Features

The only extra is a video for the song "Slow Down" which features more hiss on the soundtrack than a pre-Dolby audio cassette ? dreadful.

Conclusion

Cherry Red Films should take a long hard look at this review (and others of their discs on this site) before releasing any more material. This disc fails to meet any reasonable expectations of the DVD format in terms of sound or picture quality, and is a disgrace. The Meteors may well have something to offer musically at times, but this DVD is not it to be delivered.

I`ve nothing more to say other than AVOID.