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I've been meaning to check out Impaled Nazarene for several years now, but somehow never got around to it. And now the other day this live album comes in the mail. As the title implies, it comprises 26 songs, recorded live at Tavastia Club in Helsinki in December 2004. I must say this sounds nothing like I had imagined they would. I was expecting some hyperspeed Black/Death that had no heads or tails (don't ask, I don't know why myself.) There's actually quite a bit of Blackened Thrash here, in addition to some closer-to-what-I-expected high speed Black Metal, Scandinavian style.

Next surprise: The sound is surprisingly good. Very clear, very powerful. I don't know how much (or if) they reworked this in the studio, but I certainly wasn't expecting such a sound from an underground band. There isn't much time wasted in between songs here - there's minimal talk from the mainman, and the crowd noises are kept to a minimum, albeit enough to get a bit a that live feel. Since the show is in Finland, the talking is done in Finnish, incidentally. So essentially you pratically get 67 minutes of a relentless Impaled Nazarene assault and to a newcomer to the band like myself, this is quite a treat. The quality is such that this can very well serve as a best-of, and after listening to this I found myself regretting not having checked out the band earlier.

Oddity: Beside the mandatory live pictures, the booklet includes the lyrics. I don't recall ever getting a live album that included the lyrics. That's fucked up. :) Nice addition, that's for sure. With the interaction kept to an absolute minimum, I find this album sounds more like a best-of than a live album, but you can't go wrong either way - either as a fan who wants to check out some live stuff, or as a newcomer to the band who doesn't know what album to start with. This is one fine release.