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I've had this DVD for a while, but as usual it takes me months to watch a DVD after I purchase it (procrastination is an art of mine.) I happened to watch it just after reading a Behemoth interview and a review of the DVD in the French magazine "Metallian". In the interview, Nergal points out that the band's first DVD on Metal Mind was pretty much a disaster, with little input from the band and things that were put on there that shouldn't have been in the first place. The DVD review is the lowest rating in the magazine (and these guys rarely give any low rating.) Well, I can agree with the reviewer on a couple of points, one of which is that the two live shows presented here are kind of short - they're festival shows, after all, but more importantly, despite the two of them being 2 years apart, the sets share 5 songs, so in the end out of 17 songs, only 12 of them are different. Considering the size of the band's catalogue, one would have hoped for a more diverse set list. That's not nearly as bad as Marduk's two identical set lists in their recent DVD, however.

The live shows are pretty well filmed overall, with a few weird takes here and there. While the Metal Mind production was a "live studio" show, this is the real deal: The crowd is much more active, and so is the band - they pretty much go crazy here, while the performance on the previous DVD was much, much more tame. Despite the very similar set lists, both shows are quite enjoyable to watch. Sharing the first disc with the two live shows are two videoclips. "As Above and Below" is pretty good, while "Christians to the Lions" is more of a low budget video and not much to dwell on...

The second disc is a long documentary of backstage and road home video takes, as well as some bootleg show outtakes. All the "episodes" here are complemented by an interview with Nergal, which is a bit difficult to follow since it's spread over the 90 minutes duration of the documentary. After reading the review in Metallian, I was expecting this second disc to suck big time, but I actually found myself having a great time watching it - these guys are a bunch of clowns on the road, resulting in a mix of funny, silly and even downright disgusting moments (plus a few boring ones, of course. :)) Essentially this takes you on tour with Behemoth throughout Europe (western and eastern) as well as a short sting through the United States. Each visit is complemented by a short bootleg of the show played at the location - we're talking no more than a minute each here, so don't get too excited about additional live material!

This is quite different from the Metal Mind release and the packaging is much more luxurious, with a nice booklet filled with tour photos and liner notes. Well worth buying.